The Globe and Mail reports in its Thursday edition that Meta is enhancing its tools to alert parents if their teens chat with Instagram artificial intelligence bots about self-harm, and it is improving a system to notify first responders if someone in AI chats seems at imminent risk of suicide. The Globe's Marie Woolf writes that Meta has consulted with mental health experts to refine how its AI responds to such sensitive topics.
Parents supervising their children's Instagram accounts will be notified if their child expresses self-harm intentions to an AI chatbot. They can also choose to limit the topics their children discuss with the chatbot.
The announcement, set for Thursday, follows the launch of the federal Safe Social Media Act in June that includes several provisions to address the risk of self-harm and suicide among young people, including those associated with AI chatbots.
Bill C-34 also brings in new measures regulating AI chatbots, including a requirement for conversational chatbots that mimic human-like relationships to act responsibly. AI chatbots would be barred, for example, from inciting a user to commit a crime or to harm themselves.
The use of AI chatbots would not be subject to age restrictions.
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