Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge (Con)

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 422D and 433 to 437. I fully support the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. Her arguments have been entirely backed up by the release only today of the report entitled Invisible No More: How AI Chatbots Are Reshaping Violence Against Women and Girls by Durham University and Swansea University. The research identifies the range of design choices and failures in safety mechanisms that enable, encourage, simulate and normalise violence against women and girls. The report found that fantasies of incest and rape were normalised, and one chatbot, Chub AI, suggested violent rape and domestic abuse as categories. I reiterate the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, about the long and bureaucratic path to business disruption measures, meaning that harm continues to perpetuate as our system is not agile enough to tackle these rapidly evolving issues. I wish to pay tribute to Professor Clare McGlynn KC for her work co-authoring this ground-breaking report and emphasise the warning she made in today’s Times newspaper. She said: “Chatbot violence against women represents a rapidly escalating threat. Without early intervention, these harms risk becoming entrenched and scaling quickly, mirroring what happened with deepfake and nudify apps, where early warnings were largely ignored. We must not make the same mistakes again”. Professor McGlynn and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, once again demonstrate their ability to warn against these emerging harms, and I sincerely hope that noble Lords will back the noble Baroness should she wish to divide the House today.