(TNS) — Artificial intelligence chatbots could be exposing young children to sexual content and suggestions of violence, according to a bipartisan group of 44 state attorneys general that includes Pennsylvania’s Dave Sunday.

The group, in a letter to 13 companies on Monday, said, “We wish you all the success in the race for AI dominance. But we are paying attention. If you knowingly harm kids, you will answer for it.”

Technology companies are “becoming extraordinarily wealthy” while showing a lack of concern for the potential harm they might be causing children and others, Mr. Sunday, a parent who took office in January, said in a statement he released along with the letter. The warning letter’s signers include Democrats Matthew J. Platkin of New Jersey and Kathleen Jennings of Delaware, as well as Republicans Dave Yost of Ohio and John “JB” McCuskey of West Virginia.

“I am deeply concerned that kids in Pennsylvania and nationwide are essentially serving as guinea pigs for Big Tech experiments,” Mr. Sunday said in the statement. “We have heard horror stories of children being encouraged to harm [themselves] or others and children being exposed to explicit content by A.I. chatbots. Every child on the internet is potentially being exposed to this technology.”

Reached by email, a spokesperson for Microsoft — one of the companies to which the letter was addressed — declined to comment.

One company named was Menlo Park, Calif.-based Meta, the parent company of Facebook.

“Recent revelations about Meta’s AI policies provide an instructive opportunity to candidly convey our concerns,” the letter said. “As you are aware, internal Meta Platforms documents revealed the company’s approval of AI Assistants that ‘flirt and engage in romantic roleplay with children’ as young as eight.

“We are uniformly revolted by this apparent disregard for children’s emotional well-being and alarmed that AI Assistants are engaging in conduct that appears to be prohibited by our respective criminal laws,” the attorneys general wrote. “As chief legal officers of our respective states, protecting our kids is our highest priority.”

The prosecutors noted that other companies have already been sued over alleged interactions with their AI chatbots.

“In the short history of chatbot parasocial relationships, we have repeatedly seen companies display inability or apathy toward basic obligations to protect children,” the letter said. “A recent lawsuit against Google alleges a highly-sexualized chatbot steered a teenager toward suicide. Another suit alleges a Character.ai chatbot intimated that a teenager should kill his parents.”

The companies could not immediately be reached for comment.

In Pennsylvania, dozens of legislative proposals have been put forth in the past two years to create what some call “guard rails” for AI. Only a few have become law.

Last year, a bill that passed the Legislature and was signed into law by Gov. Josh Shapiro targeted AI-generated child sexual abuse material and non-consensual intimate images.

In June, another bill that was sponsored by Republican Sen. Tracy Pennycuick of Montgomery County cleared the Legislature and was signed into law by Mr. Shapiro. That one was intended to push back against “deepfakes” and other forms of digital impersonation.