Tech and AI

A bill introduced in Wellington would put artificial intelligence companion services inside the same rules as social media, with penalties set at a tenth of worldwide turnover

By Staff Writer  |  25 August 2026

New Zealand introduced its Online Safety Bill on 24 August. It bars under sixteens from high risk platforms, creates a regulator inside a government department, and reaches emerging services rather than only the four platforms named on the day.

The New Zealand government introduced the Online Safety (Minimum Age and Child Safety Risk Assessment) Bill on 24 August. High risk social media platforms would have to take reasonable steps to check that users are over sixteen, using existing account information, facial age estimation, digital identity services or formal identity documents. Four platforms were named as falling within it.

We simply cannot accept the harm being done to a generation of New Zealand children. One in three children aged between 13 and 17 are now spending at least five hours on social media a day.

Christopher Luxon, Prime Minister of New Zealand

The parts that are not the age limit

Three provisions in the bill will outlast the argument about the age. The first is a duty on platforms used by children to assess the risks they pose at regular intervals and to report on how those risks are being found and reduced, which is a continuing compliance obligation rather than a one off gate at sign up. The second is a new online safety regulator inside the Department of Internal Affairs, with power to monitor compliance, investigate platforms and enforce the law. The third, and the one with the longest reach, brings emerging technologies including artificial intelligence companion services inside the same framework.

The penalty is up to ten per cent of a platform's global revenue. The Education Minister said the bill places legal obligations on platforms, and that no penalty is proposed for children, their parents or their carers.

A duty to assess and report on risk, backed by a regulator with investigatory powers, is the model this industry already lives under in building safety. It travels well between sectors precisely because it does not depend on the technology staying the same.

Whether it passes is a separate question

It may not. Both of the governing party's coalition partners have said they oppose it, one describing the equivalent law in Australia as a failure and the other saying the measure will not work because teenagers will get round it. The main opposition party has submitted dozens of questions before deciding its position, among them how age verification is meant to work and which platforms are caught. Its spokesman said the party takes the legislation seriously and that the risks young people face in increasingly complex online environments are considerable.

Australia introduced a comparable ban last year. A peer reviewed study published in June by researchers based there found little evidence that teenagers had moved away from social media as a result, which is the strongest available argument that a minimum age on its own does not achieve much.

For anyone outside New Zealand the point is the drafting rather than the outcome. A bill that names artificial intelligence companion services in the same breath as the four large platforms is a bill written by people who expect the product category to change before the statute does. That is the harder thing to do, and it is the part other legislatures will copy.