AI Act trilogues: the EU’s last chance to protect children
The European Parliament, the EU Council and the European Commission are starting interinstitutional negotiations on the Artificial Intelligence Act. We ask EU negotiators to ensure the Act delivers on its promise to both this generation of innovators, and those to come.
As a coalition of over 2000 children’s rights, parents’ and mental health stakeholder organisations representing some 200 million EU children, citizens and experts, we call on negotiators not to miss this last chance to protect children and urge the Parliament rapporteurs and the Spanish Presidency to recognise their specific rights, needs and vulnerabilities, and ensure that AI in the EU is safe for them, by design and default.
The current AI Act draft falls short of protecting children and recognise their specific vulnerabilities. An AI Act that does not serve children is not fit for purpose, we thus ask EU negotiators to:
- Require AI systems intended to be used to shape the education or cognitive and emotional development of children to undergo due diligence by listing them as “high risk” under Annex III.
- Clarify explicitly that children are a specific group protected by the ban on AI systems exploiting vulnerabilities, as per the Commission’s proposal, and ensure that the threshold and conditions to apply the ban, combined with the burden of proof to enforce it, consider children’s needs.
