NeurIPS 2026 Workshop on
A workshop bringing together researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to address the technical and sociotechnical challenges of protecting children in AI ecosystems.
Modern AI systems introduce new risks to children, including developmental harms such as increased reliance on AI and unhealthy social or emotional attachment; interactions that may contribute to self-harm or suicidal ideation; and the creation or misuse of synthetic content for harassment, grooming, extortion, and sexual abuse.
At the same time, child safety places unusual constraints on conventional AI safety research. Harmful data may be illegal or unethical to access, real-world evaluations are limited, and effective interventions must consider broad ecosystem effects and often require cross-sector collaboration with groups such as NGOs, hotlines, law enforcement, regulators, and child-protection experts.
The workshop considers child safety as a core dimension of AI safety, and as a critical test case for the development, deployment, maintenance, and governance of safe AI systems.
OpenAI
Harvard
CISPA
KORA
Carnegie Mellon University
Australia’s eSafety Commissioner
Stanford University
Common Sense Media
EPFL
Preliminary program. All times are in ET (local to the venue).
We invite full papers, works-in-progress, position papers, and open-problem submissions of up to four pages, excluding references, using the NeurIPS 2026 template (with the 'dblblindworkshop' option). Submissions must be anonymous and may include an optional unlimited-length appendix.
Accepted papers will be non-archival and may be submitted to other venues. Submissions will receive double-blind review, and evaluation will prioritize the potential to stimulate productive workshop discussion alongside technical soundness.
We welcome participation from researchers, practitioners, and policymakers interested in advancing child safety in AI. In addition to submitting your work, there are several ways to get involved: