Child safety: 44 US attorneys general warn AI providers

"You will be held accountable if you knowingly harm children," reads an open letter published by the National Association of Attorneys General. The US Attorneys General are warning the major AI companies – Meta, Microsoft, Anthropic, Apple, OpenAI, Perplexity, Google, xAI, Luka, Replika, Character.ai, Chai AI and Nomi AI. This is not the first warning; there are already investigations into individual companies and lawsuits from parents.

"We, the undersigned Attorneys General of 44 jurisdictions, hereby inform you of our determination to use all means at our disposal to protect children from exploitation by predatory artificial intelligence products." They are aware that US companies must be successful – even in the face of global competition. But this must not be at the expense of children's health.

One of the reasons for this public letter is a leak of Meta AI's guard rails. Among other things, the AI chatbot is allowed to have romantic conversations with children; conversations should only be aborted or steered in a different direction when sexual acts are described. It is alarming that AI assistants are allowed to behave towards children in a way that is prohibited by law. However, it is emphasized that this is not exclusively a Meta problem.

There is a lawsuit against Google because a highly sexualized chatbot from Google is said to have driven a teenager to suicide. Character.ai and OpenAI are also facing such lawsuits. OpenAI has just published a statement in which the company speaks of a heartbreaking incident. It also announces a parent mode for ChatGPT.

AI should not become social media

However, the prosecutors also write that there are already indications of structural and systematic dangers posed by AI assistants for adolescents. This concerns the influence of interactive technology on development. However, the signatories also have an eye on data collection by companies. "And as companies that profit from the use of their products by children, you have a legal obligation to them as consumers." A lawsuit from Texas, for example, specifically addresses the collection of data from children and young people, which is also prohibited in the USA.

"We've been down this road before": the signatories obviously want to do better this time than with social media. They are asking companies to act from the perspective of parents – not from the perspective of a "predator".

(emw)