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Written by
International Team
10th February, 2025

5Rights joins global call to make AI safe for children

As global leaders gather in Paris, 5Rights calls for urgent and practical commitments to ensure corporate due diligence for child rights in the design and operation of AI systems. While children are among those most profoundly affected by AI systems, their rights and needs are too often ignored. Failure to consider children in the design and deployment of AI systems is already influencing how they learn, communicate and experience the internet. Without strong safeguards, it risks further exposing children to harm, amplifying inequalities, and undermining their agency.

The shadows of professional-looking individuals are to the left and right of the foreground. In the middle is a projection of 'AI Action Summit' with a logo to its left, of an octagon in which all the points are connected through lines. Some lines are highlighted with a dragging effect to spell 'AI'.

As a founding signatory to Everyone.AI’s call to action for Beneficial AI for Children that governments and companies will endorse in Paris, 5Rights has joined an international coalition dedicated to ensuring AI is safe by design, rights-respecting, and empowering for children. This coalition is built on key principles, including:

  • AI that upholds children’s rights and prioritises their best interests through safe and age-appropriate design.
  • Better protections for children’s data, including limitations to data processing and personal data collection.
  • Stronger safeguards to ensure children’s safety and protect their well-being from harmful AI content and online risks in AI interactions, including exploitation and abuse. 

As part of this broader effort, 5Rights will soon launch a Code of Conduct for AI developed by leading global AI experts brought together under the guidance of 5Rights Chair and leading AI governance advocate Baroness Beeban Kidron. The AI Code, outlining actionable measures to design, deploy, and govern AI systems that respect children’s rights and needs, will provide governments and practitioners with a practical guide to implement the commitments they make this week.

What children are saying about AI

Addressing the Children’s AI Summit organised by the Alan Turing Institute and Queen Mary University London last week, eleven 5Rights Global Youth Ambassadors from Africa, Asia, Europe and North America joined 100 under 18s to share the views they would have liked to bring directly to leaders in Paris. AI has the potential to enhance education, foster creativity, and provide new opportunities for connection and expression, they said, but only if built with children’s rights and well-being at the forefront. Ensuring children’s voices are heard, their rights respected, and their needs catered to by design and default must be at the centre of AI governance if these innovations are to deliver for the next generations. These demands are summarised in The Children’s Manifesto for the Future of AI.