Canadian Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation Evan Solomon spoke out against the use of artificial intelligence chatbots by children at the Govern or Be Governed conference in Montreal.
“There's a lot of discussion around people asking us, hey, should there be age-specific access to certain parts of chatbots? We're going to look at that,” Solomon said, according to the report Canadian Press.
The bill has not yet been introduced, but Solomon says he is working on it. The government also recently launched a new 30-day task force to better understand AI and how to better regulate it.
The team running this sprint also released public form you can fill out to help inform them about various aspects of AI. Solomon says more than 6,500 people filled out this large survey. I played through it myself, and while it's a little more AI-centric than I expected, it takes about 30 minutes to complete.
Solomon also mentioned that the government is looking at rules that would give Canadians the right to have their deepfakes removed. He then wonders whether children should have access to the full capabilities of some of these AI chatbots.
This focus on children seems especially appropriate since the conference also featured speakers from the parents of a child who committed suicide because of an AI friend he created on Character.AI. This is just one of numerous lawsuits brought against Character.AI over similar self-harm issues. Many large artificial intelligence companies, including OpenAI, are filing similar lawsuits.
Source: Government of Canada, Canadian Press
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