Alphabet Inc’s Google is facing pressure from child development experts to stop showing or recommending AI-generated videos to children on YouTube and YouTube Kids.
More than 200 experts, organizations and academic institutions wrote a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai and YouTube CEO Neil Mohan on Wednesday, expressing their concerns about the educational value and quality of AI videos targeting children.
Experts believe that such videos, produced in large numbers for financial gain, can be harmful to children’s attention span and social skills.
Experts have written that most AI videos can be classified as AI slop, which may leave children questioning what is real and what is not. Experts including social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, FairPlay, and the National Alliance to Advance Adolescent Health have written that YouTube should stop AI videos targeting children.
She believes that children’s screen time, watching poor quality AI videos, is replacing real-world experiences that help children’s emotional and social development.
YouTube demands that users identify modified or artificial content and take measures against spam videos created using AI. YouTube’s CEO said in January that managing AI content was a top priority.
However, child advocates say such identifications are useless to young children, as they cannot read or understand them. In March, Google invested in Animaj, an AI animation studio that creates content targeted at children, which experts say should not be shown to young children, including toddlers.
This campaign comes at a time when scrutiny of social media companies is increasing. In recent court rulings, Google and Meta Platform Inc. have been held responsible for social media addiction among young users.
