A French expert commission has proposed 18 measures on generative AI, including child safeguards and pre-market checks for consumer chatbots. The report was presented on November 10.
The commission’s recommendations are advice, not enacted rules.
What the commission proposes
The report calls for pre-market assessment of consumer conversational AI, followed by continuing checks after launch. It proposes independent, multidisciplinary evaluation and controlled access to usage, training and monetisation data for authorised researchers and authorities. Assessments would examine effects on vulnerabilities before release and after substantial changes.
For services accessible to minors, it recommends safeguards including filtering dangerous requests. It also proposes prior authorisation for toys incorporating generative AI and a consensus process to determine age thresholds.
The EU AI Act already prohibits certain harmful manipulation and exploitation of vulnerabilities. Those prohibitions have defined conditions; they do not mean every flattering chatbot response is unlawful.
A question of evidence and privacy
A survey by YouGov for Interface offers one view of use, not a clinical assessment. It surveyed 970 French adolescents aged 11 to 17 online from June 24 to 30, with parental consent, alongside 1,138 parents.
Among the 764 young users in the question’s base, 92% said they spent more time than desired on at least one of the tools surveyed. The survey grouped general-purpose chatbots, companions, social-media AI and voice assistants together. The finding is self-reported, applies to that user subgroup and does not diagnose addiction or establish that AI caused harm.
The same study found that 89% of adolescents familiar with AI identified at least one positive aspect. Its parent sample was constructed for demographic representativeness; it does not make the adolescent responses a clinical or causal study.
In separate guidance on AI and children, UNICEF calls for children’s safety, privacy and preparation for AI. It describes both opportunities and risks, rather than treating every use as harmful.
Designing age checks also involves a privacy trade-off. France’s data-protection authority CNIL warns that verification can change privacy protections when access otherwise requires no identification. In its guidance on restricted online content, CNIL describes separating the issue of an age credential from its transmission to a site. An independent intermediary can help limit the identity data sent to the service. That is a privacy design option for age checks, not an implementation chosen for these proposals. A workable policy would still need to define what is verified, by whom and what information is retained.
Any practical effect depends on whether and how policymakers adopt these recommendations.
