With Additional Inputs from Chaitanya Kohli & Prabhanu Kumar Das
“Safety cannot just stop at product design and safety by design. It must continue through monitoring, rapid response, child helplines, and compensation for survivors, because something will go wrong,” said Zoe Lambourne, chief operating officer (COO) at Childlight, warning that India’s current AI governance approach fails to address how children are harmed in practice.
Lambourne presented Childlight’s research on child safety at the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi during a session that examined how India’s emerging AI policy framework is responding to risks faced by children using generative and high-interaction AI systems.
Notably, the session, titled Safeguarding Children in India’s AI Future: Towards Child-Centric AI Policy and Governance, brought together civil society organisations, platform representatives, academics, and legal experts. Speakers repeatedly pointed out that while India has horizontal digital regulations, including the Information Technology (IT) Rules and the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, it still lacks a child-specific legal framework to govern AI-mediated harms.
Against this backdrop, Lambourne underscored how children themselves view AI.
“So young people in India see AI as powerful and beneficial, but not safe by default,” she said.
Additionally, she noted, “While many young people describe online life as enjoyable and helpful, only one in four say it feels safe.”
Why experts say child-specific AI governance is needed
Presenting Childlight’s research, Zoe Lambourne outlined multiple, intersecting reasons why child-specific AI governance is being proposed:
- Scale of harm:
“In 2024, we calculated over 300 million children around the world were victims of some form of technology-facilitated abuse or exploitation,” Lambourne said. - Sharp rise in AI-enabled abuse:
“In fact, even in the last year, we’ve seen a 1,325% increase in AI-generated sexual abuse material,” she added. - Evolving nature of exploitation:
Lambourne said artificial intelligence is increasingly being used to create both real and synthetic child sexual abuse material, including nudification and deepfakes, while also enabling new forms of exploitation. - Children see AI as useful, but not safe:
Drawing on a Childlight poll of 410 young people across India, Lambourne said children recognise both the benefits and risks of AI. - Gendered safety gap:
“Young women, in particular, are notably more likely than young men to describe online spaces as unsafe, stressful, and mixed, and less likely to say they feel safe online at all,” she said. - Where responsibility lies:
“Nearly half of our respondents, 48%, place their primary responsibility for online safety on technology companies, followed by parents and carers and national governments,” Lambourne said.
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