The following is excerpted from an online article posted by CNN
Your child is unlikely to learn an essential lesson at school this year: how to stay safe when using AI.
Just 30% of teens say a teacher has ever talked about how to use AI safely, according to a new survey of 13- to 17-year-olds by Common Sense Media.
The results suggest that young people aren’t having conversations about AI literacy — including how to stay safe, how artificial intelligence works and how to figure out whether chatbots are accurate, study coauthor Michael Robb said.
Parents probably already knew that they need to talk to their children about how they can make sure AI doesn’t replace their learning. I’ve previously explained how to do so — and how to teach kids to protect their privacy and fact-check the information they get from AI.
But did you know you also need to talk to your kids about how to stay safe when they encounter content made with AI?
Nude deepfakes are AI-created images or video that are pornographic or make a person appear to be undressed.
Creating nude deepfakes is “at the level where you could almost consider it normal behavior for adolescents,” said Dr. Chad Steel, an adjunct professor of digital forensics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, who was not involved in the study.
“There is a fundamental underestimation and probably adult misconception about how often and how familiar adolescents are with using Gen AI,” Steel said, referring to generative AI.
So, what should parents do about this risk?
First, talk to your kids about why they should never create, share or engage with nude deepfakes.
Kids “certainly don’t understand how to protect themselves, and that these images may be permanent, and may be out there forever,” he said.
Steel suggested explaining to kids that once sexualized images are posted online, people can save them to their private image archives or personal devices, and it can become impossible to get them out of the public sphere.
It’s also important to teach younger kids and teens how to avoid becoming victims of nude deepfakes created by others. Once they post an ordinary image of themselves online, anyone with access to it could use AI to place the photo of their head on an image of a nude body.
To prevent this from happening, teach kids only to post photos privately — not on public accounts — and to make sure they can trust their friends and followers, Steel suggested.
Limiting the access of strangers to our kids’ photos and educating kids about the harms of deepfakes is the best way to protect them, he said.
It’s also important to teach kids what to do if their friends make or share nude deepfakes, Carino said.
“We need to talk to our kids about having confidence to stand up for what we think is right and wrong and say, ‘No, I don’t want to be involved in this, and I don’t think that’s a good idea for you to do either,’” she said.
Keeping open dialogue with your kids will help them develop skills that will also serve them well before parents wise up to whatever online danger comes next.