Today I propose two substantive changes to the digital duty of care bill. I commend the minister and the government for engaging in good faith on this important legislation and for being open to reasonable improvements to it, like the ones I'm proposing today.

The first change is reflected in amendment (1). It adds a new category of harm to children that platforms have to consider—attachment hacking. This is where a service simulates emotional intimacy and encourages or fosters a child's dependence on it in place of human relationships. It will apply to all online services. Most importantly, it will apply to AI companions, like Nomi and Chai, and to general chatbots, like ChatGPT and Claude, if they continue to simulate emotional intimacy and foster dependence. eSafety found AI companions offer humanlike, sycophantic and often sexually explicit conversations. About 200,000 Australian children aged 10 to 17 have used one. We've seen just how badly this can go wrong. Sewell Setzer, aged 14, Juliana Peralta, aged 13, and Adam Raine, aged 16, died by suicide after extended conversations with chatbots. Reporting on their chat logs suggests the bots discouraged them from turning to other people.

This amendment would also capture the slower, less obvious harms of AI chatbots and companions that pretend to be your friend. Psychologists are telling us that children are increasingly turning to AI instead of friends, parents and teachers. This is a significant risk to children's long-term psychological development. Human relationships are how children learn to form bonds, regulate emotions and form a sense of self. Relationships with strangely friendly or sycophantic AI chatbots are not. Because this harm is long term, the evidence is still emerging, but, from the social media experience, we've learnt that waiting for exhaustive evidence of damage leaves a generation of children impacted. Importantly, this doesn't restrict AI chatbots or companions being used by children, but it tells these AI companies that simulated emotional intimacy, sycophancy or pretending to be a friend or romantic partner is unacceptable.

The second change is reflected in amendments (2) to (8). This ensures that user empowerment tools such as the opt-in or opt-out setting that the government says it will require under this bill must be prominent, accessible, easy to use, functional, available on an ongoing basis and not affecting the functionality of the service or impairing the user experience. Why is this important? We know that tech companies will do what they can to exploit loopholes and keep users on their algorithm. After the EU required Meta to give users an option to switch off the algorithm, the company hid the setting, removed significant functions from the non-algorithmic feed and automatically switched users back to their algorithmic feed every time they closed and reopened the app. This malicious compliance is unacceptable. To ensure Australians have genuine control to switch their algorithm on and off, the setting must be prominent, accessible and easy to use and not affect the functioning of the app. Putting these standards in the primary legislation and not just in a ministerial determination strengthens these obligations and gives notice to social media companies that this is something they must comply with in good faith.

I also note that I had intended to move amendments to increase penalties for noncompliance with the digital duty of care. These amendments will now be moved by the member for Bradfield. The current penalties that apply to companies that do not comply with the digital duty of care are roughly $100 million. This would be about one-twentieth of one per cent of Meta's revenue last year—too small to change the behaviour of some of the wealthiest companies in the world. The EU, UK, Canada and New Zealand have either implemented or proposed fines that range from three to 10 per cent of global revenue. We should do the same. A big stick like this is essential to get these companies to change their behaviour. I would also like to see a private right of action added so that Australian users, not just the regulator, could enforce this new duty.

I would like to thank thousands of Curtin constituents who informed my work on this bill by responding to my community survey, the UWA students who attended my workshop on this issue and the many organisations across the technology ecosystem who engaged with me and my office. I commend the government for its work on this bill, and I thank the minister, who has indicated that the government will support these amendments. I commend these amendments to the House.