Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 16 April 2024

Joint Committee On Children, Equality, Disability, Integration And Youth

Protection of Children in the Use of Artificial Intelligence: Discussion (Resumed)

Ms Claire Dil?:

I will focus on the protection of minors because that is the topic of our discussion today. First, minors represent less than 1% of our audience but we have a responsibility to protect them. We know this and we take it very seriously. We know that it is very important. We know that they are a vulnerable audience and we want to be very careful with them.

First, people on our service who are between the ages of 13 and 18 are put in a protected environment that is different from the environment for people who are over 18. For example, they will not be able to receive direct images from other users. They will have to accept receiving images from other users. We will not allow for precise geolocation of these people or for localisation of their posts. All of these settings are turned off by default. We protect, by default, their posts. Their posts can only be visible to their followers and are only searchable by them and their followers. We do not target them with ads. It is completely forbidden to micro-target minors on our service with advertisements. In addition, we make sure they are in a protected environment by putting them in an age-gated environment so that they will not have access to any graphic or sensitive media by default. They do not have to go and tick the box. It is ticked by default and they will not have access to this content. It is our responsibility to make sure the environment they are in is more protected than the adult environment. That is very important for us.