Australia has unveiled regulations requiring internet search engines to crack down on child sexual abuse material created by artificial intelligence. The online safety code announced on Friday will require services such as Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo and Yahoo to take "appropriate steps" to prevent the spread of child exploitation material, including "synthetic" images created by AI. The announcement comes after the eSafety commissioner delayed the implementation of an earlier version of the code in June after Microsoft and Google introduced AI functionality for their internet search engine services. "The use of generative AI has grown so quickly that I think it's caught the whole world off guard to a certain degree," eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said in a statement. Grant said the code was a "great example" of how regulators and tech firms could work together to make the internet more safe.