Australia’s internet regulator announced that the country has come up with a brilliant idea to curb the spread of child abuse material developed by Artificial Intelligence. Julie Inman Grant, the e-safety commissioner, said a new code drafted by the major industry giants at the request of the government would require the search engines to make sure that these types of content are not returned to the search results.   

She added that it will also require that AI functions built into these search engines cannot produce deepfakes of the same material. “The use of generative AI has proliferated that I think it’s caught the whole world off guard to a certain degree”, she said.  

The code demonstrates how the regulatory and legal landscape surrounding internet platforms is being transformed by the explosion of products that automatically create lifelike content. Inman Grant mentioned that an earlier code drafted by Google, owned by Alphabet, and Bing, owned by Microsoft, failed to cover AI-generated content; hence, she asked them to return to the drawing board.   

“When the industry’s key players declared they were planning to integrate generative AI into their search functions, we had a draft code that was no longer fit for purpose. We asked the industry to have another go,” she said.   

The regulator registered safety codes for many other internet services, like social media, smartphone applications and equipment providers, earlier this year. These codes will be activated towards the end of 2023. Furthermore, the regulator is also working on building safety codes concerning internet storage and private texting services, which have already faced resistance from privacy advocates around the globe.