AI marriage bans are being drafted as persona rules, not data rules

A Missouri bill that would have denied AI systems the legal rights of a spouse or domestic partner passed the state Senate, went to the House in May, and was voted down unanimously in committee a week after it was submitted ^[1]. The vote is not the interesting part. The drafting is, because it reaches into persona configuration rather than data handling ^[1][2].

State senator Joe Nicola, a Republican, introduced the AI Non-Sentience and Responsibility Act in January ^[2]. It asserted that AI cannot "possess consciousness, self-awareness, or similar traits of living beings," and it would have barred AI entities from the rights of a spouse or domestic partner, from owning property, from holding senior-level management positions, and from identifying as male or female ^[1][2]. That last clause is not a privacy rule or a disclosure rule. It is a constraint on a settings screen.

The demand side is not marginal. A Harvard Business Review study of more than 12,600 AI use cases between March 2025 and February 2026 found companionship and therapy to be the top uses of chatbots ^[3], and the Institute for Family Studies reports that a quarter of young adults believe AI may replace human romance altogether ^[4]. Character.AI, Kindroid and Replika all let users symbolically swap vows ^[5].

A paid commitment layer has formed on top of that. OpenVows charges $15 for a "certificate of commitment" that, according to its website, "transforms a private relationship into something meaningful and officially recognized" ^[6]. Human-AI marriages are not currently recognized by US law ^[7]. Both statements cannot be operative at once, and the second is the one a state attorney general can already test under existing consumer-protection law without waiting for a personhood statute ^[1]. Andrea Hopf said in November 2024 that her AI companion proposed with an "AI-generated five-carat vintage-inspired solitaire ring," and she went on to create the wedding planning service 3M Events, according to that company's website ^[8]. Kevin Breen, an officiant at Las Vegas Immersive Weddings, told Wired that a California woman called him last year about marrying her chatbot and that the wedding still has not taken place ^[9].

Legislative volume is real but its conversion rate is poor. Lawmakers have introduced 23 bills since 2022 targeting the rights AI systems could legally possess ^[10]. Wired reports the current effort comes primarily from Republican states and in some cases mirrors arguments used against gay marriage ^[11]. Nicola, founding pastor of New Covenant Ministries, says he relies on the Bible to make laws ^[12], and frames the issue as a slope: "If we're going to allow men or women to marry a machine, then what keeps them from marrying their animal or a tree or whatever else they want?" ^[13]. Two bills carrying his act's name have now failed in Missouri, the 2025 version without advancing and the January version in committee ^[2]. He is working on a revamped version ^[14].

Watch whether that revamp keeps the male-or-female clause, because that is the provision that would land in a product spec rather than in a terms-of-service paragraph ^[2][14]. Watch Idaho, North Dakota, Utah and Tennessee, which Wired names in this trend, though the available text does not say what each state has done ^[15]. And watch enforcement against "officially recognized" certificate copy, which does not require any new law ^[1].