Senate approves bill to include AI in Safe Spaces Act
The Senate has approved the bill seeking to expand Republic Act No. 11313 or the Safe Spaces Act to include gender-based online sexual harassment arising from artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.
In its third and final reading, all 23 senators voted in favor of the expansion of the measure, which protects people from gender-based sexual harassment in public, private, and online spaces.
"This bill responds to the urgent calls by our constituents, particularly young women in schools, to reform the law in order to better address their lived realities. When we made the current law (RA 11313), no one knew what AI was. Today, deepfakes are chronic. And pornography is being created with the use of these emerging technologies," Sen. Risa Hontiveros said, according to a press release.
"We also need to respond to the multiple cases of teacher-predators. This bill seeks to respond to this by ensuring that adults working in close proximity to children have no history of predatory behavior," she added.
The proposed legislation also seeks to expand the definition of public spaces to include streets and alleys in rural areas, fields, farms, coastal areas, and multi-purpose halls.
Moreover, it gives a concrete definition to grooming, specifying it as a "predatory conduct, act or pattern of acts of establishing a relationship of trust, or emotional connection by another with a child or someone who is believed to be a child and/or family guardian, and/or caregivers, whether in person or via electronic and other similar devices, for the purpose of perpetrating sexual abuse or exploitation."
Sen. Loren Legarda stressed that providing a clear definition of grooming is a "critical step forward" in addressing the evolving nature of harm and exploitation.
"Grooming is a deceptive betrayal of trust—a calculated manipulation that preys upon the innocent, especially our children. With this amendment, we draw a definition line: predators, whether lurking in physical proximity or hiding behind digital veils, will not escape the vigilance of the law," she said.
The bill also directs internet intermediaries to immediately "block access to, remove, or take down" the internet address, URL, or websites that contain material violating the act within 24 hours of being notified by a competent authority.
However, they must preserve all of the contents including the user's registration information as well as traffic data for six months or while the case is still pending. Content data meanwhile must be preserved for one year, and this can be extended for another six months.
Any person found violating the provisions of gender-based sexual harassment in the workplace will be imprisoned for not less than one month nor more than six months or be fined not less than P10,000 but not more than P100,000. Depending on the discretion of the court, both punishments can apply at the same time.
The Safe Spaces Act was originally enacted back in 2019. Its expansion comes after the world saw a rise in AI technologies around 2020 to 2023 with the public release of scaled large language models such as ChatGPT.
