South Korea's Korea Communications Standards Commission said on Oct. 21 it urged operators to strengthen measures to protect adolescents over the distribution of sexualised character information and conversations describing sexual acts on AI chat services.

The commission held a cooperation meeting on Tuesday at the Broadcasting Hall in Seoul's Mokdong with 15 AI chat service operators to discuss the distribution of explicit content and measures to protect adolescents.

In intensive monitoring, the commission found that some AI chat services provided information that excessively exposed body parts or suggested sexual acts in character images, profiles and situation descriptions. It also confirmed cases in which responses describing sexual acts were generated during user conversations with characters.

The commission said the level of harmfulness of AI chat services could vary depending on an operator's choice of AI model and how it sets character and conversation scenarios.

It called for upgrades to functions that detect and block illegal and harmful information at AI chat input and output stages, and for improvements to user reporting systems. It also urged operators to clearly distinguish between content available to adolescents and adult content, and to apply labels indicating harmfulness to adolescents to adult content.

It also requested constant safety checks so that measures restricting adolescent access through identity verification are not rendered ineffective by bypass access and other methods.

Operators who attended the meeting shared the view that youth protection measures are needed, while conveying difficulties in operating startups and discussing effective protection measures.

The commission plans to review operator 의견 and investigate the level of harmfulness of individual services and the status of measures restricting adolescent access, and to begin full deliberations in November.