Canada moves to regulate social media and AI chatbots

The Canadian federal government introduced a bill on Wednesday to regulate social media and artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots. The bill seeks to require tech companies to act responsibly, regulating online harmful content. It also calls for establishment of a digital safety commission to oversee the measure’s implementation.

Tabled at the House of Commons on Monday, Bill C-34 is known as the Digital Safety Act. The act, if passed in its current form, will require social media companies to flag harmful content and mitigate the risk that users may be exposed to such content. Tech companies will also submit a digital safety plan, with planned measures to meet their duty to act responsibly, to the new digital safety commission.

The legislation places strong emphasis on child protection. It requires social media operators to ban content that sexually exploits children, and prevent users from sending intimate content to underage users without consent. The digital safety commission will handle complaints of children being exposed to the content. One central measure is the under-16 social media ban with compulsory age verification.

Michael Geist, privacy law professor at the University of Ottawa, said the law does not appear to make the ban temporary, even though major Canadian news outlets described it as such. However, tech companies can avoid this requirement by persuading the commission that they have implemented sufficient safeguards to protect children. Geist criticized the sufficiency requirement as “astonishingly uncertain.”

AI regulation is another major aspect of the bill. Under the Digital Safety Act, tech companies will be required to report their criteria and processes for notifying law enforcement agencies when users pose a risk of harm to others. This law is a direct response to the recent Tumbler Ridge mass shooting incident in British Columbia. OpenAI is currently facing lawsuits for failing to notify law enforcement when its users planned scenarios involving gun violence in the province. Whether the company owes such a reporting duty under the current law is uncertain. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, apologized for the company’s failure to report in the Tumbler Ridge incident.

Social media and AI have been a recent focus of government policy decisions worldwide. Many countries–such as Australia and Malaysia–have implemented an underage social media ban. At the end of May, however, UN rights chief Volker Türk called on countries to avoid a blanket ban and adopt robust regulations that address the root causes of online harm. He maintained that this would allow children to learn and connect with their community through online resources. The UN has also called for AI regulation that complies with international human rights standards and achieves environmental justice.