UK school pupils ‘using AI to create indecent imagery of other children’
- Children in British schools are using artificial intelligence (AI) to make indecent images of other children, a group of experts on child abuse and technology has warned.
- They said a number of schools were reporting that pupils were using AI-generating technology to create images of children that legally constituted child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
- Emma Hardy, UK Safer Internet Centre (UKSIC) director said the pictures were “terrifyingly” realistic.
- UKSIC, a child-protection organisation, says schools need to act urgently to put in place better blocking systems against child abuse material.
- For more, please visit The Guardian website.
UK and US develop new global guidelines for AI security
- The UK has published the first global guidelines to ensure the secure development of AI technology.
- Agencies from 17 other countries have confirmed they will endorse and co-seal the new guidelines.
- The guidelines aim to raise the cybersecurity levels of AI and help ensure that it is designed, developed and deployed securely.
- The Guidelines for Secure AI System Development have been developed by the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), a part of GCHQ, and the US’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in cooperation with industry experts and 21 other international agencies and ministries from across the world – including those from all members of the G7 group of nations and from the Global South.
- The UK-led guidelines are the first of their kind to be agreed globally.
- The guidelines are broken down into four key areas – secure design, secure development, secure deployment, and secure operation and maintenance – complete with suggested behaviours to help improve security.
- For more, please visit the NCSC website.
Gen Z turn away from ‘addictive’ social media
- Young people say their mental health improved since shunning social media.
- It comes as research by the phone company HMD Global, showed a quarter of respondents felt anxious due to the noise of constant notifications.
- Gen Z (people born between 1996 and 2010) are the most likely to report that social media impacts their wellbeing.
- The research showed that three in five people in the Gen Z age bracket are regularly undertaking a social media detox to reconnect with the world around them.
- In another study by McKinsey Health Institute, one in four of Gen Z associated spending a lot of time on social media with worse mental health.
- Donna Dixon, lecturer of childhood and youth studies at Bangor University, stated: “Maybe the aim in the end is to encourage the healthy use of technology, emphasising the importance of recognizing positive and negative impacts of using social media and moving away from an over-simplified narrative”.
- For more, please visit the BBC News website.
Upskirting and cyber-flashing laws come into effect in Northern Ireland
- Police in Northern Ireland can now charge people with upskirting, downblousing and cyber-flashing.
- Perpetrators could face up to two years in prison and up to 10 years on the Sex Offenders Register.
- The offences are part of the Justice, Sexual Offences and Trafficking Victims Act 2022.
- Also included in the legislation is an expansion of rules to better protect children from those who abuse their positions of trust to exploit or abuse them.
- Det Supt Lindsay Fisher from the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) reported: “I want to make it clear that anyone – any gender, any age – can be a victim of these crimes. However, we know from experience that the vast majority of those affected are sadly women and girls, who up until now have not felt able to come forward and report,”
- For more, please visit the BBC News website.
