Cooperation sought from Big Tech, financial industries to protect children

By Alan Wooten
The Center Square

Protection of children from deepfake pornography and chatbots in artificial intelligence is being requested of major technology and financial companies by nearly every member of the National Association of Attorneys General.

“AI can create enormous opportunities, but companies must do far more to keep users – especially children – safe from harmful content and AI-driven risks,” said first-term Democratic North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson, a signer of both letters in the past week and a third earlier in the month that went to Instagram. “There’s no excuse for putting kids’ physical or mental health in jeopardy. These platforms need to step up now.”

The letter to lawyers of financial companies says in part, “The spread of the ability to generate and distribute deepfake NCII poses a significant harm to the public, and to women and girls in particular. We write to call your attention to these harms and to implore each of you to take strong action to stop the spread and use of this technology for nonconsensual purposes.”

NCII is the acronym for nonconsensual intimate imagery.

The prosecutors say, “Payment platforms can take stronger action to protect the public from the dangers of deepfake NCII.”

In the letter to artificial intelligence industry leaders, the attorneys general acknowledge, “Your innovations are changing the world and ushering in an era of technological acceleration that promises prosperity undreamt of by our forebears. We need you to succeed. But we need you to succeed without sacrificing the well-being of our kids in the process.”

In another excerpt, they say, “Exposing children to sexualized content is indefensible. And conduct that would be unlawful – or even criminal – if done by humans is not excusable simply because it is done by a machine.”

Jackson and Attorneys General Kwame Raoul of Illinois, Alan Wilson of South Carolina and Jonathan Skrmetti of Tennessee led the 44 signatures on a letter to 13 major artificial intelligence companies that included Microsoft, Apple, Google and Meta. Attorneys General Russell Coleman of Kentucky, Andrea Joy Campbell of Massachusetts, Matthew Platkin of New Jersey, Dave Sunday of Pennsylvania, Derek Brown of Utah and Charity Clark of Vermont led the 47 signatories on a letter to legal counsel of VISA, Mastercard, American Express, PayPal, Google and Apple.

A release from the national organization for attorneys general says engaging in more dialogue, transparency and collaboration are wanted in order to develop effective solutions.

Other artificial intelligence companies addressed in the Aug. 25 letter are Anthropic, Nomi AI, Chai AI, Open AI, Character Technologies, Perplexity AI, Replika, Luka and XAi.

In the Aug. 13 letter to Instagram led by Attorneys General Raul Torrez of New Mexico and Chris Carr of Georgia, the prosecutors ask for assurance “minors are not allowed to enable location-sharing features; send a clear alert to all adult users explain the feature, outlining the risks, and including a comprehensive disclosure of how Instagram intends to use their location data; and for those adults who have chosen to opt in to location sharing, allow a simple, easy-to-access feature that allows users to disable at any time.”