UN Secretary-General António Guterres calls for far-reaching, worldwide controls on artificial intelligence, warning that governance gaps are growing as AI capabilities expand beyond civilian use. Speaking at the inaugural UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance in Geneva, he urges that safety be prioritized and that protections for children include measures to prevent manipulation and abuse. Guterres also links the need for regulation to shifting technology flows, saying AI chips intended for civilian applications are increasingly moving to the battlefield. He characterizes the battlefield context as one in which “killer robots” are already becoming normalized.
UN reporting also highlights concerns about harmful online content. The President of the UN General Assembly, Annalena Baerbock, supports collective action and cites reported statistics on deepfakes, including that a large majority of such content is sexual and that many targets are women. Together, the accounts frame the UN’s message as a push for coordinated international rules that address both security risks associated with advanced AI and social harms such as deepfake-related abuse.
