Encourage children to be creators, not just consumers of AI: Official

Union Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw (left) in a conversation with Prof Ajay Kumar Sood, Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, during a press conference on the India AI Impact Summit 2026, in New Delhi, on Friday | Photo Credit:

India’s AI framework and guardrails should ensure that Indian children are not just users of AI but also creators of it, said Ajay Kumar Sood, Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, at the AI Impact Summit on Monday.

Speaking as part of the panel on AI and Children: Turning Principles into Practice for Safe, Inclusive, and Empowering AI, Sood noted that it was the policymakers’ responsibility to ensure that children are protected from AI while benefitting from it.

We do not have data around AI usage by children in India yet, and we still do not know the full impact of growing up with AI companions, but more inputs are needed to see how it impacts mental health and education over time, he said.

“Right from a young age, children should be involved in not just using AI but also being creators. This can be achieved by integrating AI literacy into school curricula; the good news is that there is a definitive strong attempt by the Ministry of Education to bring AI in school curricula,” he said.

Meity Secretary S Krishnan said the summit itself is an event meant for India’s next generation to help create more awareness of the technology for them. “This will especially help countries of the global South, to really move up in the development chain,” he said.

UNICEF India representative Cynthia McCaffrey urged and encouraged all global leaders coming together on the February 19 and 20 for the declaration that they should commit to promoting AI and protecting children and young people.

May-Elin Stener, Ambassador of Norway to India, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and the Maldives, who was a part of the panel, shared some worrying statistics on technology use by Norwegian children. “Ninety five per cent of Norwegian children aged 9-11 have their own mobile phones — that’s up from 85 per cent 10 years ago,” she said. “Almost half of the children in the 13 to 14 age group have seen scary or violent images or videos at least once in the past year. So, this is really quite worrying,” she said.

GDPR age

Speaking of a few solutions being contemplated by Norway, she said the country is discussing higher minimum age for social media use and also considering raising the GDPR age of consent up to 15 years of age. “We are also looking at measurements to remove mobile phones from schools,” she said.

Sanjeev Sharma of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) said despite all the good being achieved from AI, child sexual abuse material is among the most worrying. “In 2024 alone, we had more than 64,000 cases of child sexual abuse material being generated in the country. What we are doing is we are developing an AI-based tool, which we will be able to actually deploy and proactively find out which are the social media platforms and the Internet platforms that are being used for circulating such material,” he said. We are also planning to use AI tools in our tele-therapy lines for mental health, he added.

Published on February 16, 2026