Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by Director Jennifer Klein at the Kids Online Health and Safety Task Force Meeting

Good afternoon, and thank you, Neera and Arati, for bringing us together.

My name is Jennifer Klein, and I am honored to serve as Director of the White House Gender Policy Council.

At the GPC, we work to advance the safety, wellbeing, and rights of women and girls, here in the U.S. and around the world.

And that includes a focus on both the benefits of access to digital technology and social media to improve the lives of women and girls, and also the potential dangers.

So I want to say a few words about one piece of the issue we are here today to talk about – the particular impact on girls and LGBTQ+ youth – who are harmed….in many cases, more severely — by online harassment and abuse.

As digital technology has become essential to our everyday lives, online harassment and abuse, and other harms facilitated by technology, have become pervasive and widespread, particularly among young people.

Recently, with rapid advances in artificial intelligence, new forms of online harassment and abuse have emerged. This includes image-based sexual abuse through AI-generated images, which has skyrocketed in recent years. And, we know that women, girls, and LGBTQ+ people are disproportionately affected by these types of images – with, of course, impact both online and offline.

As Neera said, Congress needs to pass legislation, but as she also noted, the Administration is also doing all we can. Through the White House Task Force to Address Online Harassment and Abuse, which President Biden established in June 2022, we have taken action to improve prevention, support survivors, promote accountability, and expand research and data collection on technology-facilitated gender-based violence.

As just one example, the Administration strengthened protections for students who have experienced harassment, including online harassment and abuse, by issuing a new Title IX final rule that:

• Clarifies schools’ responsibilities to address sex discrimination and harassment — whether the conduct takes place online, in person, or both; and
• Strengthens definitions for sex-based harassment and stalking under Title IX to address the growth in tech-facilitated gender-based violence, including image-based sexual abuse.

We also know that the federal government cannot solve this problem alone.  So we have called on technology companies and others in the private sector to consider voluntary steps they could take to help prevent image-based sexual abuse.  There are many ways for companies to take voluntary steps right now to curb image-based sexual abuse — from the generation of images, to the sharing, distribution, and even sale of access to non-consensual imagery and the tools to create it.

And today’s report and recommendations are a critical next step.  I am very much looking forward to hearing more from the Task Force co-chairs, and our expert panel, including some incredible youth advocates.

With that, let me pass the floor to Deirdre Mulligan, Principal Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer, who will moderate the panel.  Thank you.