00:00The EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the Tech Commissioner Henne Verkunen have
00:04officially unveiled their EU Kids Act, proposing block-wide rules to protect teenagers online,
00:11especially from AI chatbots. To hear if people in this town support the idea,
00:16our Adnan Leal took to the streets to ask them.
00:18I'm in favour as long as it's done under the right conditions so that it doesn't limit the
00:22freedom of citizens. I'm actually in favour of this measure. I don't think we should restrict
00:27access to social media for children completely. I think it's a good thing to take care of the
00:32mental health of the minors. You could also talk about protecting the older people,
00:38especially with AI now. The internet has become a little weird. So it's better to have children
00:43off this weird environment. Yeah, yeah. And to kind of keep them safe from that. I'm quite positive
00:49because the social media could be very dangerous. I think it's a good measure as a mother of two
00:55children now, but I think it's difficult to implement.
01:01Now, actually, we can speak to Cecilia Bonnefeld-Dal, that is the head of Digital Europe,
01:07the Brussels-based group that represents Meta, Google, OpenAI, TikTok and Microsoft. Good morning,
01:13and hopefully we can hear you and see you clearly. And excuse me to our viewers for the previous
01:18technical hiccups. Just tell us, what does Digital Europe feel about this law? Are you for it
01:22or are you against it, this proposal, I must say? Good morning. And well, Digital Europe represent
01:29around 65,000 companies in 35 countries. And I can tell you that the digital community of
01:37digitalising industries, we are all in favour of protection of children. I mean, we have seen
01:44around 10 member states already putting forward proposals on how to regulate this. You have both,
01:54Malaysia, Australia already who has regulated this. And of course, protection of children is high on
02:00our agenda across the board. And really, an alignment of the European regulations will be
02:07absolutely key. We cannot have that if you live in Denmark, your protection as a child is different
02:14from the one in Germany and Spain. So it is an absolutely crucial moment for the Commission to put
02:20this forward and to align across the board on how we protect our children online.
02:25Of course, part of this law would shift responsibility to the tech companies themselves
02:29that you, of course, represent to protect children. Will they? Will they self-police?
02:34I mean, protection of children online cannot be only one person's responsibility or one party's
02:42responsibility. It is a joint responsibility on public and private sector. And of course, we already
02:50have a lot of different protections in place. What is important now is that we find the right balance
02:57and that we actually get it to function. The biggest risk is really that if you are a child or
03:03parent,
03:03that you have to interpret 27 different national rules and you end up being confused about what is
03:10allowed and what is not allowed. And then, of course, we need to be totally sure that we are not
03:15inventing something that we already have. We already have extensive platform regulations, the AI Act,
03:27the AI Act and the GDPR, of course. So the Kids Act really have to find that extra layer on
03:34top that
03:35is needed to give the right protections for children. And just last week, we heard that AI could wipe out
03:41humanity. How do you react to these comments? Well, I think we should say AI is a tool. And as
03:50any other
03:51tool, we need to find the right balance on how we use that tool. And AI is also the only
03:57way that we
03:58can do online protection or that we can do cyber protection from big cyber attacks. It is the only
04:04way that we can cure cancer or make important optimization of what you're going to talk about
04:11in a second, the energy grid. So AI is basically a ticket to a lot of good things. But there
04:17are things
04:17that, of course, we need to look at how to avoid those risks. So without AI, there is also no
04:24online
04:25protection of children.
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