Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps his Department is taking to (a) understand and (b) help tackle the threats posed by artificial intelligence to young people through social media platforms.

Protecting children is at the heart of the Online Safety Act.

The Act’s duties apply to AI generated content in the same way as to ‘real’ content - AI generated content is regulated where it is shared on an in-scope service and is either illegal content or content which is harmful to children. In-scope services will be required to assess the risk of harm to users from this content and implement measures to manage and mitigate this risk.

Government is clear that we will not hesitate to build on the Act where necessary when it comes to keeping children safe.