Over 100 Organizations Demand Child Protections From AI Ahead of UN Summit

A day before the United Nations' inaugural session on artificial intelligence regulation, more than one hundred non-governmental organizations from around the world signed a joint statement demanding that governments impose hard safeguards to protect children from the effects of AI systems. The coalition is led by the UK-based 5Rights Foundation, with Amnesty International and Save the Children among the signatories.

The statement lays out a specific list of demands for governments. Chief among them is a requirement that companies prove their AI systems are safe for children before they reach the market, along with financial penalties for violations of children's rights. The coalition is also calling for a ban on design features that exploit young users' psychological vulnerabilities, and a ban on the commercial use of children's likeness, voice and biometric data.

The scale of the problem

The authors of the statement stress that the goal is not to slow down technological development, but to reverse the order of operations. Instead of releasing products and fixing the damage after the fact, companies would first have to demonstrate that their systems are safe. The figure of 20 million children using AI tools is meant to show that the phenomenon has long outgrown the experimental stage and now requires firm legal frameworks rather than voluntary industry pledges.

Children have given us a clear diagnosis of the problem. They aren't asking us to block AI innovation, but it shouldn't be a case of cleaning up the mess after harm has happened either. - Leanda Barrington-Leach, executive director of the 5Rights Foundation

Lawsuits as regulatory backdrop

The coalition explicitly points to the ongoing lawsuits against Character Technologies and OpenAI over harm caused to minors by companion chatbots. These cases have for months fueled public debate over how much responsibility language-model makers bear for the content and relationships their products build with users under 18. For the statement's organizers, this is proof that current oversight mechanisms are failing to keep pace with the speed of deployment.

As long as companies are rewarded for speed, engagement and data extraction rather than safety, we'll keep treating the symptoms while the disease becomes endemic. - Leanda Barrington-Leach, executive director of the 5Rights Foundation

Timed to the UN summit

The appeal was deliberately published just ahead of the UN's inaugural session under the Global Dialogue on AI Governance, the first international format of its kind dedicated to hammering out shared rules for overseeing artificial intelligence. The statement's organizers are hoping child protection will rank high on the agenda, rather than being treated as a side issue next to national security or economic competition between major powers.

What it means for companies and parents

For tech companies offering AI products aimed even partly at younger audiences, the coalition's demands would mean substantially higher costs of entry and a requirement for safety certification before launch. For parents and guardians, it signals that pressure on regulators is mounting, though none of the requested measures yet have the force of binding law in most jurisdictions, including the European Union.

Poland was not named directly in the statement, but the approaching deadline for the EU AI Act to take full effect means the protection of minors using AI systems will also have to land on national legislative desks. European companies operating in education, entertainment and social media with an AI component should watch whether the coalition's demands find their way into further implementing acts under the EU regulation.

A further test of how far these demands will go will be the summit itself, and whether the participating governments commit to concrete pledges or, as has often happened with similar international initiatives before, settle for statements of intent.

Sources: Euronews Next (euronews.com)