Report from Reuters
In Brief – Canada has introduced a sweeping Safe Social Media Act that aims to protect children under 16 from online harms by setting an age limit for social media and creating a digital regulator to establish and enforce safety standings for social media platforms and AI services. The measure arrives amid heightened scrutiny of AI chatbots following a lawsuit alleging that OpenAI failed to alert authorities after a mass shooting in British Columbia in which the suspect allegedly discussed plans on ChatGPT. Officials estimate the legislation could take about a year to pass and another 18 months to establish the regulator. Digital policy experts in Canada described the approach as broader than Australia’s, which simply set a 16-year-old age limit for social media, because it seeks to redesign the online ecosystem through platform obligations rather than simply restricting youth access, while also extending oversight to AI systems.
Context – Canada is looking to join a couple of digital regulation parties. First, online age limits and corresponding age checks are on the march globally. Australia’s 16-year-old age threshold for social media accounts is the highest profile example. However, more than six months after going into effect, reports indicate that many teens are circumventing the law and one of the effects of those who are impacted is less access to news. European countries like France, Spain, and the UK are calling for similar age limits, but so are developing countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Ecuador and Egypt with younger populations and more authoritarian governments. Might they prefer less teen access to news? As search engines and AI chatbots converge, the idea that interacting with a chatbot brings liability to the corporate provider but interacting with a search engine does not, raises interesting questions. Florida is suing OpenAI based a similar circumstance to the shootings in British Columbia. And Australia is now requiring age verification for search engines like they do for social media. Finally, a German court recently ruled that Google is liable for the content of its AI answers to a greater degree than they are for their search results.