AI chatbots could be ‘restricted for children’ under new social media ban

Sir Keir Starmer is considering fast-tracking a social media ban for under-16s, which could include AI chatbots restrictions.

The prime minister wrote on his Substack yesterday that he wants to ‘tighten up’ the Online Safety Act to ensure AI firms are ‘firmly in scope’.

He said: ‘It’s vitally important that our rules keep up with the rapid pace of technological change.

‘This will build on recent steps we’ve taken to ban nudification apps and criminalise the creation of intimate images without consent.’

Concerns over chatbots – computer models trained on massive amounts of text to predict the next word in a sentence – were echoed by Liz Kendall.

The Technology Secretary told Times Radio this morning: ‘When it’s just that one-on-one with AI chatbots, I’m really concerned, as is the Prime Minister, about the impact that is having on children and young people.

‘And I would say, we’re taking steps so that any illegal content shared by AI chatbots, for anyone – adults too – will be stopped.’

Kendall said AI tech companies will be held accountable by the media regulator Ofcom, much like how social media companies are now.

‘That is why the Prime Minister has said, “you don’t get a free pass here – you are responsible for your technology”,’ she added.

If forced to comply with the Online Safety Act, AI firms would need to stop their bots from generating illegal content related to terrorism, child sexual abuse, harassment and hate crimes or else face a fine.

It comes after the government clashed with X over its in-built chatbot, Grok, which created explicit images featuring real people and children.

The UK’s Online Safety Act already requires social media networks and adult websites, like porn, to age-check users.

Yet Metro has revealed how AI bots are urging youngsters to consider suicide, while children can chat with bots impersonating Jeffrey Epstein.

Child safety and mental health experts, meanwhile, are increasingly raising the alarm over children viewing chatbots as friends and therapists.

What could a social media ban involve?

The government launched a consultation on banning social media for teens last month after the Lords backed a rebel amendment calling for it.

The world’s first social media ban for young people took effect in Australia in December, requiring people to be over 16 to use most platforms.

Platforms are expected to use age-estimation technologies to do so, such as facial and voice analysis or examining activity patterns.

But Starmer’s vision of the ban may go a step further than that, according to his Substack post.

Starmer said he wants to set a minimum age for social media ‘in a matter of months’ and restrict functions that ‘keep them hooked to screens’ like autoplay and endless feeds.

He added that he intends to limit VPN access for children, referring to the tech that creates a secure connection between your computer and a server in another country.

This would be ‘to make it harder for kids to get around age limits of services or certain functionalities’, Starmer wrote.

These will be considered in the social media ban consultation.

Social media ban ‘like putting gaffa tape over a pothole’

Child safety campaigners Metro spoke with had mixed feelings about Starmer and Kendall’s announcement.

Katie Freeman-Tayler, policy and research head at Internet Matters, said two-thirds of children use chatbots.

She added: ‘While we welcome the government’s announcement to protect people from illegal content on AI chatbots, it is important they also hold AI chatbot providers accountable in protecting children from content that is legal but harmful to them, such as suicide and disordered eating content.

Bertie Aspinall, the co-founder of the parental safety tool Safetymode, said the government is assuming that ‘no social media on phones equals smartphones become safe’.

‘Although there is bad content on social media and on AI chatbots, it’s like putting gaffa tape over a pothole,’ Aspinall said.

‘May look like it works, but doesn’t really do the job.’

Instead, Aspinall suggested, officials must ask phone manufacturers to help reel in addictive features.

Sophie Stocks, vice president of education and wellbeing at the online safety group Smoothwall, said children need to be taught how to use technology responsibly.

‘Though schools are already doing extraordinary work to protect students in their care, a lack of both time and resources mean that, unfortunately, it is hard to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to online harms, particularly AI, and many early warning signs can go unnoticed, or are misread,’ she added.

‘Today’s announcements will help us move towards a more nimble, proactive system fit for the threats we’re facing.’

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

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