California considers bill to expand online child protection rules to AI

Add AI to the long and growing list of potentially harmful things legislators want to protect children from, along with online gaming, gambling, pornography, social media and age-restricted goods like alcohol, vapes and knives. And the stakes may be rising in age assurance, with California introducing legislation to protect children from AI that would bring in a right of private action. It would also ban some facial recognition systems.

The Leading Ethical AI Development (LEAD) for Kids Act, AB 1064, does not explicitly require age assurance, but would create a board to oversee and regulate AI systems used by children, require developers to carry out risk assessments to classify the potential of their systems to harm children, and establish a registry and incident reporting requirements with mandatory periodic independent audits. Children’s personal information could not be used to train an AI model without written parental consent.

Emotionally manipulative AI chatbots would be banned, along with emotion detection and social scoring systems, and AI “used to develop facial recognition databases through untargeted scraping of children’s facial images from the internet or surveillance footage.”

The latter clearly refers to Clearview AI, which is limited to law enforcement and other government agencies due to a settlement reached with ACLU back in 2022, and pivoted toward federal contracts with a new CEO tandem announced last week.

The California bill would also prohibit the use in education of AI systems that collect or process children’s biometrics.

The bill is sponsored by Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, a Democrat, with the support of Common Sense Media.

“We fully reject the notion that the race to lead on AI is a choice between being first or being safe,” says Common Sense Media Founder and CEO James P. Steyer. “The two must go hand in hand; our kids and teens deserve nothing less than the best technology our country has to offer, with safety and with the knowledge of how to use these powerful tools for education and life. This novel and critical legislation sets a new standard for responsible AI development that puts children’s interests first and ensures that innovation advances in tandem with protection.”

Age verification requirements are already on the state legislative agenda with the “Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act.”

A webinar hosted by Biometric Update and Goode Intelligence will explore the implications of the UK’s Online Safety Act, which takes force in July, and what businesses must do to be ready with representatives of Daon, Luciditi, Ondato and JT Telecom on March 6. Attendance is free with registration.

Article Topics

AI  |  biometrics  |  California  |  children  |  legislation