AI is already in the process of improving lives, but it is also making the lives of children harder and protections are needed, said experts at the Fortune Brainstorm AI conference Tuesday.
Baroness Joanna Shields, OBE, is trying to help protect children against sexual abuse facilitated by AI. Shields, founder of the WeProtect Global Alliance, has helped bring together more than 100 governments to share best practices for combatting online harms and crimes through her organization.
“The impact is devastating, and then they’re using these nudify apps in ‘sextortion’ cases, where they’re actually enticing young people to upload an image of themselves, a sexually explicit image, thinking they’re talking to somebody that likes them and that they’ve developed a relationship with, and then they use that for extortion,” Shields said during the session.
Shields confirmed the “Protect Us” film will be included in the curricula of schools in different countries to bring awareness to the issue.
As the risks to children increase with AI, Emilio Puccio, the Secretary General of the European Parliament Intergroup on Children’s Rights, said the EU government is stepping up to protect them.
The EU is approaching the issue from criminal standpoint, with new legislation criminalizing AI-generated sexual abuse material. At the same time, other legislation is trying to look at the problem through a lens of prevention, including through the trailblazing AI Act passed in May 2024, but also through the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act, Puccio said.
“We have understood that criminalizing only happens after the harm is already done. So we need to actually tackle the problem upstream and tackle the infrastructure that’s made this possible,” Puccio said.
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