Canada to regulate AI chatbots after school shooting
New bill proposes age restrictions on social media for under-16s and chatbot guardrails. Academics warn of loopholes and weak enforcement.
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Canada is moving to regulate AI chatbots and restrict social media for children under 16 following public outrage over a February school shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, where a suspect's ChatGPT account had flagged violent content but was never reported to police.
The federal government introduced legislation this week that would create a new digital regulator and follow Australia in banning social media for minors. The bill requires chatbots to reduce the risk of users seeking harmful content and to include crisis intervention steps when users discuss suicide or self-harm.
OpenAI acknowledged it made "an egregious human error" by failing to alert Canadian authorities to troubling messages from the 18-year-old suspect whose account was internally flagged for violence.
But legal experts and academics have raised significant concerns about the bill's effectiveness. Evan Light, an associate professor at the University of Toronto who focuses on technology and privacy, said he was "shocked at how underdeveloped the bill was." He noted that restrictions on internet use could easily be circumvented with virtual private networks (VPNs) or other tools.
Florian Martin-Bariteau, director of the Centre for Law, Technology and Society at the University of Ottawa, warned that the framework could push children to riskier, smaller platforms. "By trying to protect kids, we may actually put them at greater risk," he said. Australia's social media ban, which took effect recently, has already seen a substantial number of children under 16 retain accounts.
Identity and Culture Minister Marc Miller said the government needed to balance privacy concerns with regulation, noting the law does not apply to private messaging apps like WhatsApp or Signal. Companies meeting regulatory criteria would be eligible for exemptions from the social media ban.
Government officials estimate the bill could take a year to pass and 18 months to set up the digital regulator once it does. Meta, Google, and TikTok have all responded, with Meta calling social media bans "counterproductive" and the others pledging to work with the government on safety standards.