Celebrating the launch of the Children & AI Design Code

On March 18, 2025, at the World Forum on the Future of Democracy, AI and Humankind, 5Rights Chair Baroness Beeban Kidron unveiled the Children & AI Design Code, a first practical initiative demanding designers of AI systems prioritise children’s rights and interests, not exploit them.

While the wolrd is excitingly embracing the opportunities offerred by AI, for more efficient healthcare, groundbreaking discoveries, their impacts on our society are often forgotten.

Children’s lived experience of AI systems, which are integral to their learning, playing, socialising, and living through a childhood, has been even less considered in global innovation practices and policies.

The Children & AI Design Code provides a holistic analysis of the design considerations that an innovator must consider throughout the chain of AI system designs, from the preparation, intention building, data collection stages, to the development, deployment, and the establishment of post-deployment monitoring, support for transparency, user reporting, and a plan for retiring a system.

This holistic consideration is necessary because an AI system can impact children in many forms of direct and indirect ways:

1. Children’s data can be used as input data to train AI systems.
2. Children’s experience of a service or product can be shaped by the AI system, e.g. data-based profiling and nudges being applied to prolong childrne’s engagement with screens.
3. Children are likely to engage directly or indirectly with an AI system, with the use of AI becoming increasingly opaque in our everyday technologies.
4. The outputs of an AI system have the likelihood of impacting children, e.g. determining their opportutnities of receiving healthcare or learning support.
5. The outputs of an AI system may influences decisions made by adults that impact children, e.g. the prediction of exam results may affect a child’s academic opportunities.

The Code provides a practical and actionable framework for us to re-imagine AI with children’s best interests in mind. Unlikely previous effort, the code is designed to be applicable to both public and private sectors, small and large companies, and, cross all domains, such as education, health, media etc. It is primarily designed for those designing, adapting, or deploying an AI system that impacts children, but it can also be used by