A girl interacts with an artificial intelligence (AI) robot at the fourth China International Consumer Products Expo (CICPE) in Haikou, capital city of south China’s Hainan Province, April 15, 2024. (Xinhua/Guo Cheng) BERLIN | Xinhua | As generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) reaches children through both the classroom and the internet, governments and schools are attempting to simultaneously protect young users and prepare them for a technology that will become increasingly necessary in the future. The debate over children’s use of AI has intensified recently as the United Nations (UN) has called for stricter child-safety rules for AI systems, while several European countries have moved to define when and how students should be allowed to use the technology in schools.
FROM GLOBAL WARNINGS TO CLASSROOM RULES UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last week warned that AI is reaching children faster than safeguards can be put in place to protect them. Speaking at the opening of the Global Dialogue on AI Governance in Geneva, Guterres underlined that products other than AI face strict safety checks before being marketed to children. “We test every toy before it reaches a child … Yet AI has reached our children — their learning, their friendships, their most private questions — before anyone asked what it would do to them,” he said.
The risks of AI are no longer theoretical, he stressed, warning that children are already being deceived by machines posing as friends, steered toward self-harm and harmed by images of abuse that can be created at the touch of a button. “No child should be a guinea pig for unregulated AI,” he stressed. That concern is already shaping national policy.
In Norway, the government announced new guidelines in June that would strictly limit the use of generative AI in schools, especially among younger children. Under the plan, pupils in grades one to seven will generally not be given access to AI from the autumn school term. Students in grades eight to 10, meanwhile, may use AI gradually and cautiously, provided that teachers have first acquired sufficient competence before students receive training and access.
Upper secondary students are expected to learn how to use AI appropriately so they are prepared for further education and work. France has already moved in a similar direction in 2025, when it issued an official framework, saying…
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