LONDON: Some of the world’s biggest tech and AI firms have agreed to follow new online safety principles designed to combat the creation and spread of AI-generated child sexual abuse material.

Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and ChatGPT creator OpenAI are among the companies to have signed up to the principles, called Safety By Design.

The commitments have been drawn up by child online safety group Thorn and fellow nonprofit All Tech is Human and sees the firms pledge to develop, deploy and maintain generative AI models with child safety at the centre in an effort to prevent the misuse of the technology in child exploitation.