Australia’s safety code for search tools takes effect, with age verification rules

Like its counterparts in the EU and UK, Australia’s digital regulator is beginning to formalize its online safety codes. The eSafety Commissioner has registered the first round of codes, accounting for three of nine total codes. According to a release, they include a code related to search engine services, plus codes covering enterprise hosting services and internet carriage services. A primary goal is to protect kids from accessing pornography and harmful content online, such as sites that promote suicide, self-harm or disordered eating.

Commissioner Julie Inman Grant notes the importance of Schedule 3, the Internet Search Engine Services Online Safety Code. Inman Grant says “search engines are often the windows to the internet for all of us” – and, as such, can indirectly expose kids to all kinds of adult content.

The code applies to “any features integrated within the search functionality and the user interface of an internet search engine service, whether enabled by artificial intelligence or otherwise but does not include standalone applications or tools that are not integrated within the internet search engine service.”

It also does not apply to search tools that are primarily intended to provide the end user with results sources from the site. (For instance, it would not apply to Biometric Update’s search engine.)

Web search tools have 6 months to implement age assurance

Compliance measure 3 is worth quoting at length: “By no later than 6 months after this Code comes into effect and where technically feasible and reasonably practicable, a provider of an internet search engine service must: a) implement appropriate age assurance measures for account holders; and b) apply tools and/or settings, like ‘safe search’ functionality, at the highest safety setting by default for an account holder its age assurance systems indicate is likely to be an Australian child.”

“At a minimum, such tools and settings must filter out online pornography and high-impact violence material detected in search results.”

Likewise, compliance measure 20 says that at minimum, “a provider of an internet search engine service must take appropriate steps to test and monitor and improve the effectiveness of its age assurance measures over time.”

Again like the EU and UK, Australia’s eSafty Commissioner is just getting started. She’s pushing for additional commitments from industry on the remaining codes, which variously clever app stores, device manufacturers and – perhaps most controversially – social media services.

She says “it’s critical to ensure the layered safety approach which also places responsibility and accountability at critical chokepoints in the tech stack including the app stores and at the device level, the physical gateways to the internet where kids sign-up and first declare their ages.”

The commissioner is also pursuing modifications that address protections related to AI companions and chatbots.

“We are already receiving anecdotal reports from school nurses, that kids as young as 10 are spending up to five hours a day with AI chatbots, at times engaging in sexualised conversations and being directed by the chatbots to engage in harmful sexual acts or behaviours,” she says. “We need industry to be building in guardrails that prevent their chatbots engaging in this type of behaviour with children.”

Inman Grant says she’s awaiting input from industry on the matter – but that if she feels the proposed solutions are inadequate, she will “move to developing mandatory standards.” The sector has been given plenty of time; the safety codes were originally due to be submitted for registration assessment in December 2024, and industry has already been granted several extensions. Inman Grant has already sent back one round of draft codes, deeming them insufficient.

Per the release, the codes and standards are mandatory and enforceable and failure to comply may result in civil penalties of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars (US$32.2 million) per breach.

Article Topics

age verification  |  Australia  |  Australia age verification  |  biometric age estimation  |  biometrics  |  eSafety Commissioner  |  Online Safety Act (Australia)