GG News Bureau
UNITED NATIONS, 6th Feb. UN human rights expert warned on Monday that the volume of reported child sexual abuse material online has increased by 87 per cent since 2019 in another indicator of the importance of AI oversight.
UN Special Rapporteur on the sale and sexual exploitation of children Mama Fatima Singhateh said that generative AI and eXtended Reality software had made the problem worse and called for more action to eradicate child exploitation online.
She said that it is now possible to create computer-generated “deepfakes” and so-called “deepnudes” and distribute them encrypted and without built-in safety mechanisms.
Ms. Singhateh alleged that the private sector and big tech were “less reliable” than they had promised to be ahead of Safer Internet Day on 6 February.
She said “with serious ingrained biases, flaws in programming and surveillance software to detect child abuse”, (and a) failure to crack down on child sexual abuse and exploitation networks.
Ms. Singhateh praised the UN Secretary-General’s AI Advisory Body which is making recommendations for the establishment of an international agency to govern and coordinate Artificial Intelligence.
She stressed that governments and companies should “work together to solve the issue of child abuse, by including the victims’ voices “in the design and development of ethical digital products to foster a safer online environment”.
