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UN PhotoGENEVA / AI SAFETY ACCOUNTABILITY
STORY: GENEVA / AI SAFETY ACCOUNTABILITY
TRT: 05:12
SOURCE: UNTV CH
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGES: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 7 JULY 2026, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
1. Wide shot, Global Dialogue on AI Governance summit, Palexpo, Geneva
2. Wide shot, panel speakers
3. Wide shot, delegates
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights:
“AI is not just about technology; it is about equality and accountability. It touches all areas of our lives, from jobs to crossing a border, to accessing information. That is why human rights needs to be embedded into the design, development, deployment and use of AI.”
5. Wide shot, delegates
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights:
“Human oversight of AI systems cannot be just a rubber stamp. It requires that an identified person be granted authority, competence, time, independence and power to alter and even stop a system.”
7. Wide shot, podium speakers
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights:
“We don't consider safety standards for medicines, cars or aircraft as obstacles to progress. They are the reason why people trust those technologies in the first place.”
9. Medium shot, delegate looking at phone
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Sima Bahous, Executive Director, UN Women:
“One in four women human rights defenders, activists and journalists whom we surveyed had experienced AI-assisted online violence and six per cent of them said that they have been victims of deepfakes or digitally manipulated imagery. And so much of this goes undocumented, goes unnoticed, goes unreported.”
11. Wide shot, delegates, interpreters’ booths
12. SOUNDBITE (English) Sonia Livingstone, Global Scientific Panel on AI:
“We recognize mounting evidence of human rights violations and I have to say the evidence for the violations is currently much more compelling than the evidence for human rights benefits in many settings where AI is being used in the home, in education, work, communities, even though the promise of AI remains substantial in specialist fields.”
13. Wide shot, delegates looking at large screen featuring podium speaker
14. SOUNDBITE (English) Sasha Luccioni, Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer, Sustainable AI Group:
“Anyone with a cell phone, with mobile service, a laptop can connect to this cloud and profit from AI to some extent. But the impact, the negative impacts that we see are very, very local. And so, in terms of water and energy and emissions, in terms of the health impacts that are getting more and more dire, and we're seeing it really impact the most marginalized populations already.”
15. Wide shot, delegates
16. SOUNDBITE (English) Jhalak M. Kakkar, Executive Director, Centre for Communication Governance, National Law University, Delhi:
“There's already a lot of inequality in the Global South. And it raises fundamental questions of how do we measure the environmental impact of AI? How do we deal with the implications that economic and other value is being accrued in a location that's very, very far away from the communities that are most impacted?”
17. Medium shot, delegates in discussion
18. SOUNDBITE (English) Sima Bahous, Executive Director, UN Women:
“Eighty-eight per cent of leading AI researchers are male. So, when we look at who benefits and who is at risk, we know that while AI offers a great promise of economic growth, women continue to face much higher job automation risks compared to their male counterparts.”
19. Wide shot, delegates
20. SOUNDBITE (English) Sonia Livingstone, Global Scientific Panel on AI:
“Across 11 Global South countries, up to one child per classroom reported that AI was used to make sexually explicit deepfakes of them. Reports of AI-generated child sexual abuse material to the US CyberTip line, NCMEC, are rising exponentially.”
21. Wide shot, inside Palexpo conference centre
22. Wide shot, World Food Programme autonomous truck
23. Wide shot, children using virtual reality headsets
24. Medium shot, child moves arm and appears to throw something invisible away while wearing headset
25. Wide shot, helicopter stand, delegates and participants
26. Medium shot, young participants with a small robotic machine
27. Medium shot, small robotic machine demonstration
28. Wide shot, World Food Programme autonomous truck
29. Medium shot, World Food Programme logo on side of truck
30. Medium shot, participants talking
31. Medium shot, dancing robotic dog
32. Wide shot, robotic dog demonstration, onlookers
Who is legally responsible when Artificial Intelligence causes harm? The issue took centre stage on Tuesday at a new AI governance summit, where leading experts warned of mounting evidence of human rights violations linked to the technology.
“Across 11 Global South countries, up to one child per classroom reported that AI was used to make sexually explicit deepfakes of them. Reports of AI-generated child sexual abuse material to the US CyberTip line, NCMEC, are rising exponentially,” said Sonia Livingstone, from the Independent International Global Scientific Panel on AI.
Highlighting other key findings from the panel’s first preliminary report mandated by the UN General Assembly, Ms. Livingstone insisted that the evidence for AI-linked violations against individuals, vulnerable and disadvantaged groups was “much more compelling” than the benefits.
This is because the technology is being used “to create and amplify persuasion and deceit, to spread disinformation, distrust”, with personal data “taken, manipulated, abused, exploited” by self-learning systems, she maintained.
It is precisely because AI can be used for harm - and for good - that the UN believes all countries should be involved in deciding how the technology should be governed. The first Global AI Dialogue now underway in Geneva - on the sidelines of the AI for Good Summit hosted by the UN International Telecommunication Union (ITU) - will be followed by a second Dialogue next May in New York.
One way to ensure that AI serves humanity rather than works against it is by hardwiring equality, accountability and human oversight into its design, development and deployment, insisted Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
“We don’t consider safety standards for medicines, cars or aircraft as obstacles to progress. They are the reason why people trust those technologies in the first place,” he stressed.
Among the many unresolved governance issues, one of the biggest is the energy-hungry data centres that power today’s AI platforms – prompting an industry-wide transparency call from the UN Secretary-General.
“Anyone with a cell phone, with mobile service, a laptop can connect to the cloud and profit from AI to some extent. But the impact, the negative impacts that we see are very, very local,” said Sasha Luccioni, co-founder of Sustainable AI Group.
Some of the world’s most marginalized populations are already suffering “in terms of water and energy and emissions, in terms of the health impacts that are getting more and more dire,” she said.
Besides the challenge of deciding how to measure the environmental impact of AI, digital policy expert Jhalak Kakkar, from the Centre for Communication Governance at Delhi’s National Law University, worried that it risked making existing inequalities in the Global South worse. “How do we deal with the implications that economic and other value is being accrued in a location that's very, very far away from the communities that are most impacted,” she asked.
It is becoming increasingly obvious too that as AI development speeds up, the harder it is for legislative checks and balances to keep up.
“We need to be able to open up the black boxes of AI,” insisted Morocco’s Amal El Fallah Seghrouchni, who explained that large language models draw on around 180 billion parameters when they operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. “There are very few lawyers and there are very few sociologists who are in a position to understand exactly what is going on,” she said. “Even AI researchers do not have the tools sometimes to understand the complexity of these algorithms.”
Today, one in four women human rights defenders, activists and journalists taking part in a UN Women survey said they had experienced AI-assisted online violence; six per cent said that they have been victims of deepfakes or digitally manipulated imagery. “So much of this goes undocumented, goes unnoticed, goes unreported,” said Sima Bahous, Executive Director at UN Women.
Related to this is the fact that “when we look at who builds AI, women are largely underrepresented” and make up only 30 per cent of the tech’s global workforce, the agency head stressed. According to the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI report, 88 per cent of leading AI researchers are male.
In terms of who benefits and who is at risk, “we know that while AI offers a great promise of economic growth, women continue to face much higher job automation risks compared to their male counterparts. And when we look at who has a voice, gender equality remains largely invisible,” UN Women’s Bahous insisted.
The Global Dialogue on AI Governance exists to ensure that the priorities of all nations are included and not just the most technologically advanced. It’s the UN’s firm belief that the benefits of AI must be shared by all.
Committed to in the Global Digital Compact and established by the UN General Assembly, the AI Dialogue is a UN platform where all governments and stakeholders convene to discuss international cooperation, share best practices and lessons learned.
