The B.C. government says the introduction of the Safe Social Media Act by the federal government is a “promising step” toward addressing the harms that young people face online every day.
But it doesn’t go far enough.
“For far too long, we’ve seen real tragedies in B.C. and abroad,” Attorney General Niki Sharma said.
“Many parents struggling to figure out what to do with safety measures, from coming from their kids’ phones and what the harms that they could face on those platforms.”
The federal government introduced the legislation on Wednesday that would require social media companies to restrict children under 16 years old from their platforms, but will not force AI chatbot platforms to do the same.
The Safe Social Media Act aims to create a “duty to protect children” for all online platforms that will require social media and AI chatbot platforms to incorporate age-appropriate designs, including content warning labels, safe search settings for children, and measures to reduce addictive behaviours like endless scrolling.
Platforms will also have a “duty to act responsibly” that aims to mitigate the risk of chatbots communicating harmful content and behaviour, while requiring AI companies to implement crisis intervention protocols when a user expresses a desire to commit violence or self-harm.
Social media companies, meanwhile, will have to label bot-driven harmful content and “deepfakes,” or synthetic content.
Sharma said the changes coming in this bill can’t come fast enough.
“Whatever moves through the house should move quickly and when we set up the regulatory regime it seems like a lot is left to the regulation,” she added.
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“When it comes to that, those have to move quickly along with the regulatory oversight in place.”
Sharma said they will continue to advocate for a national reporting threshold.
“It does fall short of our government’s ask for a clear national reporting threshold for platforms, particularly when it comes to identifying and reporting credible threats of violence or plans for harm,” she added.
Sharma said that they are asking for this mandatory reporting legislation after what happened in Tumbler Ridge.
The teenage mass shooter had been flagged for their behaviour on ChatGPT ahead of the shooting on Feb. 10, but OpenAI ultimately alerted the RCMP to that activity after eight people died and two others were hurt.
The federal government’s legislation does not include a similar age restriction for AI chatbots.
Sharma said she asked Culture Minister Marc Miller about this and he said they are looking at “really clear transparency measures and guidelines that the regulator will set up.”
Miller told reporters on Wednesday that “imposing this duty to inform the authorities is a different step, I believe, and not in my mind necessarily one, well, that isn’t being done because OpenAI did have a protocol for reporting out, it just made an egregious human error.
“And so I’m not going to sit here, pretend today that there is one rapid solution that would have prevented what happened at Tumbler Ridge from happening. But I do think this law could have made a difference.”
Sharma said it falls short of what the B.C. government was asking for.
“What we want to make sure is that the rules that are in place and the regulatory oversight that’s in place would be strong enough to prevent some of the tragedies that we’ve seen right here in our province, but really also across the world.”
Sharma said the B.C. government stated in the past that not including chatbots in this legislation would be “kind of ridiculous” as the pace and change of AI means we cannot be two steps behind.
She said that while the federal government’s legislation talks about the duty to protect children online, it leaves it up for the regulator to figure out the content and the details for a lot of that work.
“So we want to be at the table when it comes to making sure that the regulatory regime has enough teeth to it and that’s something that I think I’ll be watching for.
“It’s a good step that we’re finally moving forward with really strong online safety rules that once in place we’ll get at the actual design of AI and social media platforms and set clear rules. But we need to get there quickly.
“B.C.’s interested in being involved in making sure that they have teeth.”
–with files from Sean Boynton
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