The staggering amount of harmful AI-generated online content has prompted an urgent call from across the UN system for a raft of measures to protect children from abuse, exploitation and mental trauma.
Cosmas Zavazava, Director of the Telecommunication Development Bureau at the International Telecommunications Union ( ITU ) - one of the key agencies that drafted the statement, which includes guidelines and recommendations - catalogues a dizzying array of ways that children are targeted.
This extends from grooming to deepfakes, the embedding of harmful features, cyberbullying and inappropriate content: "We saw that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, many children, particularly girls and young women, were abused online and, in many cases, that translated to physical harm," he says.
