CANBERRA, Australia—The eSafety Commissioner’s Office is now requiring age verification for all users who navigate to porn platforms in Australia’s digital space.
An announcement was made on Tuesday, with eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant unveiling nine new industry codes aimed at protecting minors from exposure to material she considers “lawful but awful.” She characterizes this terminology as covering sexual artificial intelligence companions and online pornography websites.
“We’ve been concerned about these chatbots for a while now and have heard anecdotal reports of children—some as young as 10 years of age—spending up to five hours per day conversing, at times sexually, with AI companions,” Grant explained. “We know there has been a recent proliferation of these apps online and that many of them are free, accessible to children, and advertised on mainstream services, so it’s important these codes include measures to protect children from them.”
Australian industry codes require the parent companies of online pornography providers to introduce and enforce “appropriate age assurance measures.” These include interventions such as identity checks, credit card verification, biometric age estimation augmented by artificial intelligence, and other solutions.
They must do so or risk civil penalties that can climb to well over millions of dollars. Such companies must also “take [further] appropriate steps to test and monitor the effectiveness of its age assurance and access control measures over time,” via reporting by News.com.au and Crikey.
