Safer Internet Day 2025 – Embracing AI opportunities and risks in today’s online world

Remember the saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words”? Now, imagine a world where pictures and images can be easily modified or created with the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). This is one of the challenges posed by emerging advanced technologies, particularly AI, which is making deepfakes a concerning reality.

While AI offers many exciting benefits and opportunities, like increased efficiency and the potential for groundbreaking innovations, it also raises serious ethical and societal concerns, especially for children and young people—ranging from data privacy to misuse of AI’s technical capabilities.

As part of the Safer Internet Day (SID, 11 February 2025) campaign, Safer Internet Centres (SICs) have organised a range of activities to raise the awareness of children, parents, teachers and carers on how to safely navigate the digital world. 

Given the growing importance of AI nowadays, the SICs have also developed resources, campaigns and trainings to address the issues posed by advancements in artificial intelligence.

Learn more about some HaDEA-managed projects and the resources developed on this topic:

•  The Irish Safer Internet Centre produced two podcasts: Casting the Net - What do we need to know about ChatGPT? (Part 1) and (Part 2) in which Youth Panellist Emma spoke to Elain Burke, Science and Technology journalist. 
• The Luxembourg Safer Internet Centre launched a Deep-fake Awareness Campaign called Monkey see, monkey do: Don’t believe everything on the net! to highlight the risks of deepfakes and other AI-generated content online. 
• The Dutch Safer Internet Centre hosted an Expert discussion on deep fake technology and the challenges of enforcement that highlighted the large presence of deepfake pornographic materials on a specific website and what needs to be done.

Background information

The Digital Europe Programme (DEP) aims to build the strategic digital capacities of the EU and to facilitate the wide deployment of digital technologies. With an overall budget of €7.5 billion, out of which €0.8 billion is managed by HaDEA, the programme will support investments in the following sectors:

• High Performance Computing
• Cloud, data and Artificial Intelligence
• Cybersecurity
• Advanced digital skills
• Accelerating best use of technologies

HaDEA manages actions under Cloud, data and Artificial Intelligence, Advanced Digital Skills and Accelerating best use of technologies.

Useful Resources:

European strategy for a Better Internet for Kids (BIK+)

Better Internet for Kids portal

Safer Internet Centres throughout Europe

*This article has been written partially in collaboration with GPT@EC, a tool developed by the European Commission that securely explores the use of pre-trained large language models (LLMs) and to generate texts using AI.