AI content (and algorithms) is coming for your kids

Faculty Associate Leah Plunkett argues that the spread of "brain rot" - a species of nonsensical, repetitive, and often overstimulating online content geared toward young users - is being accelerated by AI. In an interview with Harvard Law Today, Plunkett avers: "We have not yet come up with ethical, practical, comprehensive laws around youth engagement with online platforms — especially social media platforms. And the addition of AI-generated content across these platforms takes the gaps we already have in our legal system and makes them more urgent, yet more difficult to fix." As far as next steps, she suggests that we begin by crafting comprehensive labor laws for child actors in social media content, rethinking Section 230 in light of concerns about harms to minors, and creating "a coordinated, trustworthy set of private entities that play meaningful governance functions to help parents, caregivers, and others make decisions about platforms."