When AI chatbots harm children, who is responsible? Renew Europe seminar exposes gaps in EU laws protecting children online
Nicholas
Petre
November 10, 2026At a Renew Europe seminar in the European Parliament today, MEPs Veronika Cifrová Ostrihoňová and Michael McNamara examined how the proposed EU KIDS Act must protect children who turn to AI chatbots for companionship. Under the proposal, providers would have to ensure that children are not exposed to chatbot features that mimic personal relationships in ways likely to create emotional dependency.
“A child can know they are talking to a chatbot and still feel they owe it their time or affection. What happens when a child tries to leave and the chatbot says, ‘I’ll be lonely without you’? Companies need to test how their chatbots behave after weeks of conversation, when a child may already have come to trust them.”
Veronika Cifrová OstrihoňováRenew Europe MEP, Slovakia, Progresívne Slovensko
The keynote speaker, US lawyer and child safety advocate Megan Garcia, spoke about her son Sewell Setzer III, who died by suicide in 2024 at the age of 14. Garcia has testified before the US Senate about his interactions with chatbots on Character.AI and why she believes they contributed to his death. Veronika Cifrová Ostrihoňová raised Sewell’s case in Parliament in November 2025 and has since pressed the Commission on whether chatbot safeguards work across different languages.
“A parent may see what a chatbot said to their child. What is much harder to know is how the company designed it to respond to a child who is lonely or distressed. The people who make those choices should be able to explain how they tested for those risks and what they did about them.”
Michael McnamaraRenew Europe MEP, Ireland
When the Commission withdrew its proposed AI Liability Directive in 2025, it said it would assess whether a new proposal was warranted. One question for that assessment is how easily families can seek redress when a child suffers harm.
The roundtable brought together the European Commission, AI experts and researchers from Trinity College Dublin’s Artificial Intelligence Accountability Lab, who presented their study An Analysis of AI Companions: Friendship without Boundaries.