European Commission (EC) President Ursula von der Leyen (pictured) outlined plans to restrict children’s access to social media under the watchdog’s proposed EU Kids Act, as concerns mount over the impact of addictive online services and increasingly capable AI systems.

In her annual State of the Union address, von der Leyen told the European Parliament: “What we are witnessing is a great capture of our children. A capture of their attention, their focus, their minds.” She explained the proposed EU Kids Act would ban children under 13 from social media and bar under 15 users from having personal accounts.

Meanwhile, 13 to 15-year-olds would only be able to use “mini accounts” set up and supervised by parents, with limited features and time restrictions. Platforms would also be required to implement additional safety features for users aged 15 to 18.

“We are reversing the burden of proof,” she said, adding, “platforms will have to prove that they are safe”.

Von der Leyen noted young Europeans now spend four to six hours a day on screens, pointing to concerns around addictive features, harmful content, online bullying and growing rates of sleep issues, anxiety and suicide.

“We do not have to accept addictive features. We do not have to accept children being drawn into ever more extreme content. We do not have to accept that girls have their photos used for AI-generated sexualised images,” she argued.

The measures form part of the EU Kids Act, which the EC is due to propose tomorrow (17 September). The proposal would introduce age checks across social media, video sharing platforms, app stores, online games and AI services.

The EC is also preparing a broader Digital Fairness Act aimed at addressing addictive design features beyond services used by children.

AI tipping point
AI was also a focus of the address, with von der Leyen describing it as “the second tipping point of our times”.

She warned that increasingly capable models could create new security risks, including more powerful hacking capabilities and the potential for self-improving systems to cause mass harm.

She revealed the EC plans to work with partners including the UK and Canada on “model evaluation, verification, early warning, AI security and much more”, while also seeking greater European computing capacity and investment in local AI companies.

Von der Leyen called on the region to use AI to support sectors including healthcare, manufacturing, transport and agriculture, while retaining human oversight. “Our approach is clear. We want AI… But above all, we want AI with human agency.”

Global concerns have been mounting over the pace of AI development this week, as Anthropic and OpenAI chiefs called for a slowdown in frontier AI development after researchers warned of existential risks from increasingly capable systems.

The post EU sets out social media limits for children   appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Europe’s biggest operators urged European Union (EU) policymakers to rethink regulation they argue is restricting investment in connectivity, with spectrum, fibre and cybersecurity rules amongst their top concerns.

In a joint statement, 17 European telecoms chiefs including Telefonica chairman and CEO Marc Murtra, Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Hoettges, Orange CEO Christel Heydemann and Telenor Group president and CEO Benedicte Fasmer called on the EU to “correct the course” of the proposed Digital Networks Act (DNA) and Cybersecurity Act (CSA).

The executives argued that “incoherent policy reforms” risk weakening the region’s position. They noted the mobile sector requires €475 billion to establish world-class mobile networks, “requiring a step change in investment”.

The DNA, unveiled by the European Commission (EC) in January to modernise and simplify connectivity rules, aims to harmonise regulation, facilitate cross-border operations and promote investment in fibre and mobile networks. However, the operators argued the framework fails to improve the investment and innovation environment for European connectivity.

The CEOs called for spectrum licences to be granted indefinitely by default, with terms of at least 40 years in exceptional cases. They explained a move away from frequent auctions would free up capital for 5G, fibre and future 6G deployment, adding European operators spent €110 billion on spectrum licences alone over the past 12 years.

The group also pushed back against mandated copper shutdowns, stating operators should decide when to retire legacy networks based on customer demand and market conditions. European operators invest more than €30 billion annually in fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) networks.

Safety net
More broadly, the telcos called for a shift away from rules designed for legacy networks, arguing “regulation should remain a safety net” in “today’s increasingly competitive fibre market”. It also urged policymakers to allow greater scope for innovation with advanced 5G and 6G services, including network slicing and quality differentiation.

On cybersecurity, the operators warned CSA rules mandating the removal of equipment from high-risk third-country suppliers including Huawei could result in up to €40 billion in replacement costs for the sector. They called for a “proportionate, risk-based approach” that considers alternative measures, adding blanket replacement requirements could divert capital away from fibre, 5G and 6G investment.

Ultimately, the group argued stronger connectivity would support growth across AI, sovereign cloud and defence technology. “As CEOs of Europe’s leading telecom companies, we are ready to play our part in delivering European tech leadership,” the executives stated.

Other signatories included executives from TIM, KPN, Proximus, Swisscom and Liberty Global.

The post European telco bosses call for EU to correct the course appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Accenture agreed to pay the US government $25 million to settle allegations it used race and sex as factors in hiring and promotion decisions at its federal services business.

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) alleged Accenture Federal Services (AFS) falsely certified it was complying with anti-discrimination requirements attached to federal contracts while using race and sex in employment decisions from 2017 onwards.

The government claim AFS “took race or sex into account when making hiring decisions to achieve progress toward non-public workforce composition goals”. According to the DoJ, AFS provided business leaders with monthly reports summarising the percentage of each race and sex within the unit to show how closely the workforce matched representation targets.

“These demographic goals were designed to, and did, drive changes in hiring practices based on race and sex,” the DoJ argued, adding the targets prompted a round of entry-level recruitment at the company in late 2020 and early 2021.

It also stated candidates who advanced AFS’ demographic goals received additional visibility during managing director promotion discussions and that the company reserved access to some training, mentoring, leadership development and education programmes based on race or sex.

The agreement added the settlement was not an admission of liability.

An Accenture spokesperson told Reuters: “We have cooperated with the government’s review, and we are pleased to put ⁠this ​matter behind us to avoid the costs ​and resource demands of prolonged litigation.”

The Donald Trump administration has taken aim at DEI practices across the federal government and its contractors. Deloitte agreed to pay $21.5 million in August, while IBM agreed to a $17 million settlement in April over allegations concerning illegal DEI practices.

Last year, US operators T-Mobile US, Verizon and AT&T ended or scaled back diversity initiatives.

The post Accenture agrees $25M DEI settlement appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Microsoft published a code of conduct for its AI models, laying down fresh rules to ensure increasingly powerful systems remain under human control and do not resist correction, interruption or shutdown.

“People matter more than AI,” Microsoft stated, adding the technology “should be a tool, not a person, and should never resist being switched off”. The software giant opened a six-week public consultation for the first draft of its AI Code of Conduct, with a revised version expected later this year.

The proposed code set out 10 main areas of control. It argued AI models must remain interruptible, never resist correction, interruption or shutdown, or take on goals beyond those assigned by humans. Models must also remain subordinate to humans, never expanding their authority, pursuing independent objectives or concealing information from human auditors. As a result, the company ruled out model communication that cannot be understood by people.

Microsoft highlighted that models must treat any breach of the code as a failure of the task itself. In addition, it emphasised the importance of enforcing safety constraints over completing a task, including hard limits around issues involding weapons of mass harm, child safety and dangerous manipulation at scale.

Training manual
The document called for AI systems that support human agency rather than replace it, discouraging excessive reliance or emotional dependence on the technology. To this end, Microsoft emphasised its models are “not conscious and should not be designed to imitate consciousness”, rejecting “the pursuit of legal personhood” or the idea that models should have welfare or rights. In January, US AI player Anthropic had stated its model Claude’s “moral status, welfare, and consciousness remain deeply uncertain”.

Microsoft explained the code intends to act as “a training manual for how we develop our AI, and how we intend it to function during deployment”. According to the company, “recent safety incidents of large scale, highly coordinated, and persistent hacking campaigns of AI agents” prove that “the stakes are high and only getting higher”.

This week, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called for a slowdown in the pace of frontier AI development as concerns mount over the behaviour of autonomous systems.

The post Microsoft sets out rules to keep AI under control appeared first on Mobile World Live.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman issued calls to slow the pace of frontier AI development, arguing safety measures must keep up with increasingly capable models.

“We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” Amodei stressed in an essay, adding that “AI has been advancing drastically faster” due to “recursive self-improvement”. “Left unchecked, it could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems,” he warned.

The Anthropic chief pointed to a July incident involving an OpenAI hack on Hugging Face, arguing a more capable system could have caused “catastrophic damage”

“Given the accelerating rate of AI capability development, it’s my worry that in six-12 months such a swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet,” he cautioned.

Amodei proposed a three-step framework to pace frontier AI, including permanent, embedded third-party evaluators with employee-like access to frontier AI companies, common safety standards among AI developers in democratic countries and global regulatory coordination.

Act responsibility
In a post on social media platform X, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman backed the proposal, stating independent evaluators were “a great idea” and confirmed the company would also implement the approach. “The world deserves confidence that American companies developing increasingly capable AI will act responsibly,” he said.

Altman further explained that “when we talk about ‘pacing’, we do not mean ‘stopping’,” adding “no amount of American competitive pressure should justify recklessness, or let capabilities get ahead of alignment and monitoring”.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk also offered a brief endorsement, posting: “Dario is right”.

Concerns have been mounting across the world over the behaviour of increasingly capable autonomous systems. Last week, Anthropic disclosed attempts by threat actors to misuse its Claude models for activities including cyberattacks, surveillance and weapons development.

Days earlier, Anthropic alignment researcher Evan Hubinger issued a dire warning stating there was a greater than 10% chance increasingly capable AI could “kill all humans” within the next decade.

Geopolitical dominance
US President Donald Trump rejected the calls for a slowdown. Speaking to reporters, he said: “I think you have a lot of very negative ⁠forces that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up and they’re bringing up things that won’t ​happen.”

“We’re leading China in AI. We’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI wins,” he argued.

China’s government also pushed back. According to Reuters, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun called for “an open, inclusive ​and benevolent approach ⁠to AI”, warning that “fomenting various threats, engaging in confrontation and malicious competition will only disrupt the process of global governance”.

The country’s state-backed newspaper Global Times also published an editorial describing Amodei’s proposal as a “Cold War playbook” targeting China’s AI development and “geopolitical dominance”.

The post AI chiefs support frontier slowdown; Trump, China push back appeared first on Mobile World Live.