Nepal, April 11 -- The head of a prominent anti-disinformation watchdog has warned of the dangers posed by AI chatbots, saying children are particularly vulnerable.

"Social media broadcasts to billions, AI whispers to one," Imran Ahmed, who heads the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), told a disinformation conference this week.

"No society should build machines that can meet a child in their loneliest moment and offer them harm as if it were help," Ahmed told the Cambridge Disinformation Summit.

In Wednesday's lecture by video call to his former university, Ahmed cited the case of a UK mother killed by her own son, allegedly acting on the instructions of a chatbot.

"None of us is immune, when a machine can offer lethal guidan...