Source · Select Committees · Culture, Media and Sport Committee
Recommendation 3
3
Accepted
Paragraph: 41
Clarify Online Safety Bill obligations for connected devices and voice assistants surfacing harmful content.
Recommendation
The Government should clarify the obligations in the Online Safety Bill for voice assistants, connected devices (like smart speakers) and other emerging technologies that can surface harmful content, to ensure that those that integrate search services in particular fall in-scope of the duties. It should also set out in its response to this report how the online safety regime will categorise voice assistants and connected devices that integrate internet search so that they do not service harmful content like hate speech and other harms.
Government Response Summary
The government partially accepts the recommendation, clarifying that the Online Safety Act's broad scope covers voice assistants and connected devices integrating internet search, subjecting them to duties to conduct risk assessments and mitigate illegal content and harm to children.
Paragraph Reference:
41
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
We partially accept this recommendation. The Online Safety Act will ensure users are protected from illegal content and content harmful to children when using voice assistants or other connected devices that integrate internet search. The Online Safety Act has a broad scope that can capture a wide range of online services depending on whether they are “user-to-user” services or “search” services. The Act places new tailored duties on search services. To the committee’s point about the obligations in the Bill (now Act), regulated search services will have a duty to conduct regular risk assessments in relation to illegal content, and if relevant, content that is harmful to children. Depending on the outcome of these assessments, such services will then be required to put measures in place to (i) minimise the risk of individuals encountering illegal content and (ii) mitigate and manage the risk of harm to children. To the specific ask about voice assistants: where a voice assistant is integrated into a regulated search service then the provider of the service will be subject to the relevant Connected tech: smart or sinister?: Government and Information Commissioner’s Office Response 5 duties imposed by the Act on search services (outlined above), and these will extend to the design, operation and use of the voice assistant. Alternatively, where voice assistants use a separate search service to obtain the results it presents to its users, that separate search service would be subject to the illegal content and child safety duties, and as such would only be able to provide search content to the voice assistant which satisfied the requirements of the Act. These duties of care deliver strong protections to children, while respecting everyone’s right to access information.