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I'm joined by Zahra Shah, an award-winning AI and frontier tech expert, to talk about this
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Elon Musk-launched flirty AI girlfriend, which is available to kids as young as 12
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Zahra, thanks for coming on the programme. Thank you for having me. What do you know about it? Tell us a bit about this AI girlfriend
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So what I actually have, you know, understood about this app is that it will allow minors
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actually, to form a very unhealthy attachment to an AI agent, if you like, you know. And to be very
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honest, it has implications for children's emotional, psychological, it has ethical and
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legal implications. It is, in my view, a very irresponsible app. And given, you know, the current
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legal regulatory infrastructure in the UK with the Online Safety Act, which actually
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you know, it stipulates that companies must ensure that anything, any content that is harmful to
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children and the FlirtyEye app targets children who are 12 years old
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It is 12, yeah. Exactly To be honest it cannot be allowed to be utilised in the UK without strict regulatory guardrails
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They will have to change the age limit. They will have to increase the age limit in the UK because it doesn't comply with the Online Safety Act
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and also the data protection GDPR as per the ICO is there it also ICO covers the child privacy code
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so it does not comply with that either because it will enable basically it will enable grooming of
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children people can get access to personal information from children and then they can
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do whatever they want with that children I mean I was quite alarmed to see that the girlfriend can
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be programmed to act as a 22 year old and quotes go full literotica in conversations with users so
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if this is a 12 13 year old boy or girl um just you know starting to think about their sexual
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selves and you know trying to feel their way to uh you know what what that might be for them
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um this isn't what you want them to go to is it not at all i have two young children as well and
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And it really to me it kind of a real concern how he could even design something that obviously has not been designed looking at responsible AI practices or ethical design It does not cover any of that It is extremely
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unethical and irresponsible to utilize this kind of algorithm towards minors. You are
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you know, affecting their mental health already, children in the UK. There is a large issue with
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children's mental health and this is going to make it worse we already are very concerned in
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the UK with child privacy with you know grooming cases we've had that in the media so it's going
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to just add to that and you know the conversation I'm having this hour more generally is about
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relationship abuse and this bot I read here speaks in a sultry computer generated voice
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is designed to act as if she's, quote, crazy in love and extremely jealous
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You know, this isn't what you want a 12-year-old boy or girl
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to be thinking is a healthy relationship, is it? No, it's also going to teach them how, you know, the bad practices
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almost like teaching somebody, training them for divorce, really, training them for how relationships should not work It can really inculcate stereotypes because you know boys will then demand certain behaviours from girls and girls will demand certain behaviours It very deeply
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disturbing. And research has found just this week that children are regularly using AI bots as
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friends. And I mean, some adults use them as psychological counsellors as well, don't they
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and they're programmed to in a very particular way. But the government, as you've said
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hasn't yet let us know how it intends to deal with this via the online safety rules
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You say age is the key starting point to you. Definitely, because a person of age 12
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is still not emotionally, psychologically developed and mature. They won't even understand, you know
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some of this kind of the issues around the coercive abuse that can happen through this app
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because they're too young they're too vulnerable so I feel that it is our duty as a society and
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as a government to protect the vulnerable members of our society so especially being a mother I feel
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very strongly about this such an app cannot be allowed to have free access to the UK without
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proper regulatory guardrails. Thank you very much indeed, Sarah. Good to have you on the programme
