AI’s impact on children in the spotlight amid debate over regulation

WASHINGTON (TNND) — The federal government will soon start investigating the impact artificial intelligence chatbots and other products have on children’s mental health and how tech companies are responding to the risks their platforms are creating.

The Wall Street Journal reported the Federal Trade Commission will start studying the impact of AI chatbots on children’s mental health and start seeking documents from leading developers of the technology. It would be the first move for the consumer protection agency to start preparing for further rules or actions on AI chatbots.

Momentum on regulating AI through legislation in Congress has stalled out with other priorities taking precedent and disagreement about whether it will hurt the industry’s progress. The Trump administration has made keeping America’s position as a leader in AI a priority with promises to fast-track the construction of sprawling data centers and promoting its exports around the world.

But it is also weighing how to protect children on the platforms after a recent series of troublesome incidents involving chatbots and other AI products.

First lady Melania Trump has made child online safety her signature issue both times the president has been in office. She held a meeting focused on safety in using AI in education with tech leaders at the White House on Thursday and helped gather support for a bill banning deepfake images earlier this year.

“During this primitive stage, it is our duty to treat AI as we would our own children—empowering, but with watchful guidance. We are living in a moment of wonder, and it is our responsibility to prepare America’s children," she said.

Figuring out how to regulate AI — or whether to do it at all — is one of the biggest debates in Washington right now. Lawmakers and tech companies are under immense pressure from parents and advocacy groups to safeguard children using the rapidly developing technology, but the government also wants to preserve America’s position as a global leader in the space.

The industry has also changed its tune on regulations after initially being highly supportive of implementing guard rails to avoid worst-case scenarios. After a series of meetings and hearings with lawmakers at the Capitol last year, the industry has shifted its focus to lobbying against regulations at the federal and state levels.

The debate over what to do with AI and questions about how to regulate it has many parallels to social media, where lawmakers have repeatedly vowed to rein in Big Tech companies after numerous instances of failing to protect minors but have failed to get anything comprehensive signed into law. The slow-moving Congress has also struggled to keep up with advancements in technology, creating a daunting proposition for lawmakers to predict how AI will advance and what dangers need to be guarded against.

“It's a real Wild West situation right now, and it's also worth noting that a number of the AI companies are also social companies,” said John Wihbey, an associate professor of media innovation at Northeastern University and author of “Governing Babel.” “It's going to be tough to disentangle social media from generative AI models.”

Advocates for regulation are hoping to avoid a similar scenario to social media’s rapid development where companies were able to mostly make their own standards and norms without government checks that has resulted in issues like data privacy and child safety that still have not been dealt with on a federal level and a patchwork of state laws creating a complicated regulatory web for companies to navigate.

Some AI companies have already taken steps on their own ahead of legislation going into place, which comes after recent reports of teenagers dying by suicide after forming relationships with chatbots. Several major AI developers like OpenAI and Character.AI are facing lawsuits after teens died by suicide after interactions with their chatbots.

Meta has also come under recent fire after a Reuters report revealed an internal policy document that said Meta’s chatbots could have conversations with children that are “romantic or sensual.”

OpenAI announced this week that it would be taking steps over the coming months to address the safety concerns for its underage users like allowing parents to link accounts with their teens, disable certain features and get notifications when ChatGPT detects distress in an interaction with their children.

Meta also added new restrictions for users under 18 using its AI products with restrictions on what chatbots can say and training for them to not respond to teens on sensitive topics like self-harm, suicide and inappropriate romantic conversations.

Social media companies have taken similar steps under pressure from parents and Congress to minimize a lengthy list of troublesome outcomes for underage users.

“There's a lot we need to learn about what the AI companies are doing, what kinds of safeguards are putting in place,” Wihbey said. “There's no more important value than protecting children who are in many ways defenseless because they just don't have the cognitive capacity to deal with really sophisticated chatbots that are highly engaging and potentially encouraging them to engage in risky behavior.”