EU Kids Act (Proposed)

Why It Matters

First EU legislative proposal to place AI companions and general conversational chatbots under child-specific safety-by-design duties alongside social media, video-sharing platforms, games and app stores, and to make the AI Act's enforcement and fining machinery apply to companion and chatbot providers for the protection of minors. It would set a single EU minimum age of 15 for autonomous social media accounts and require certified EU age verification for that check, replacing divergent national age limits.

Who Must Comply

Safety Provisions

• Article 6: providers of online social networking services and video-sharing platform services may not let a person under 15 create or use an account where the service poses a risk to minors (live transmission to indeterminate audiences, contact with users outside pre-existing connections, profiling-based recommender systems, recommender-driven contact suggestions, or designs enabling uninterrupted consumption and automated re-engagement notifications); guardians may set up limited-feature accounts for minors aged 13 to 15
• Article 7: guardian-controlled access for minors below 13
• Article 8: general safety-by-design duty for online social networking services, video-sharing platform services, online games, AI companions, general conversational chatbots and software application stores, with protective settings applied by default and relaxed only after age assurance establishes that the user is an adult
• Article 9: prohibition on designing, organising or operating social networking and video-sharing services in a manner intended or reasonably foreseeable to encourage compulsive or excessive use by minors
• Article 14(1)(a): providers of AI companions and general conversational chatbots must ensure minors are not exposed to addictive designs, avoiding design features and system behaviours that simulate interpersonal relations likely to create emotional dependencies
• Article 14(1)(b): safe settings for minors, including that by default the system does not use information or analysis derived from a minor's prior interactions in subsequent interactions, except where necessary to protect the minor's safety
• Article 14(1)(c): transparency on economic transactions within AI companions and chatbots
• Article 14(1)(d): access to AI companions and general conversational chatbots for minors below 13 only enabled and controlled through the guardian tools of Article 20
• Article 14(1)(e): state-of-the-art evaluation and testing for risks to the health, safety, fundamental rights and physical, mental and emotional wellbeing and development of minors before placing the system on the market or putting it into service, with safeguards implemented for identified risks
• Article 14(1)(f): post-market monitoring to identify, assess and mitigate harms and emerging risks, including detecting and responding to serious incidents involving minors (providers that are micro or small enterprises exempt from this point)
• Article 14(2): where an AI companion or chatbot is a functionality of a social networking service, video-sharing platform or online game, it must not be activated automatically or displayed prominently, minors must not be encouraged to use it, and minors must be able to opt out easily at any time
• Article 14(3): adherence to a code of conduct assessed as adequate by the Commission under Article 23 may be relied on to demonstrate compliance
• Article 5: providers designated as very large online platforms must notify a compliance plan to the Commission and commission an independent audit of it by auditors with expertise including child protection, paediatric medicine and child psychiatry, developmental science, age assurance and interface design
• Articles 27 to 29: age assurance must be accurate, reliable, secure, non-intrusive, privacy-preserving and non-discriminatory; it may not identify, track or profile users and must be zero-knowledge; the Article 6 minimum-age check must rely on a certified EU age verification solution using an EU proof-of-age attestation
• Articles 34 and 35: supervision and enforcement through the Digital Services Act framework for platforms, games and app stores and through Chapter IX of the AI Act for AI companions and general conversational chatbots, with an expedited procedure

Exemptions

Compliance & Enforcement

Primary Source