Ethics and Family Privacy in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Martín Carbajo-Núñez

mcarbajon@gmail.com
Pontifical University Antonianum, Rome, Italy (Italy)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2814-5688

Abstract

The progressive expansion of artificial intelligence is transforming the home into an object of economic interest and technological intrusion. Devices designed to facilitate family life, such as household appliances, vehicles, sensors, and digital assistants are turning the most intimate spaces of the home into valuable data sources for market logics. Protecting family privacy, and especially safeguarding the best interests of the child, must take precedence over any supposed informational benefit or commercial interest. In fact, when privacy is violated, the human being is reduced to a mere object. In the first part, we will outline some conclusions on family privacy from our studies of sixty five national codes of journalistic ethics, drafted and adopted by journalists in forty-two European countries. We will then examine the challenges that AI poses to privacy within the family (ch. 2) and in the lives of minors (ch. 3), and finally propose strategies to address these challenges (ch. 4).

Keywords:

Privacy, family, minors, artificial intelligence, codes of ethics

AI Act. (2024). Regolamento (UE) 2024/1689 del Parlamento europeo e del Consiglio, del 13 giugno 2024, che stabilisce regole armonizzate sull'intelligenza artificiale e modifica i regolamenti (CE) n, 300/2008, (UE) n, 167/2013, (UE) n, 168/2013, (UE) 2018/858, (UE) 2018/1139 e (UE) 2019/2144 e le direttive 2014/90/UE, (UE) 2016/797 e (UE) 2020/1828 (regolamento sull'intelligenza artificiale). Recuperato da: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2024/1689/oj.
  Google Scholar

Banning, S. A. (2020). Standards of Work Today: Using History to Create a New Code of Journalism Ethics [eBook]. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Pub.
  Google Scholar

Carbajo-Núñez, M. (2007). Intimidad y comunicación. Bases filosófico-teológicas para un encuentro en autenticidad. Antonianum, 82, 637–675.
  Google Scholar

Carbajo-Núñez, M. (2011). Informazione e Diritto all’Intimità. Una prospettiva cristiana. Frontiere, 8, 129–147.
  Google Scholar

Carbajo-Núñez, M. (2012). El espectáculo de la intimidad. Raíces históricas de la comunicación centrada en el yo. El Àgora USB, 12(2), 449–534.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21500/16578031.86   Google Scholar

Carbajo-Núñez, M. (2014). L’attenzione alla soggettività e l’appello alla coscienza nei codici deontologici del giornalismo europeo. in A. V. Amarante (ed.), Fedeli alla chenosi del Redentore. Scritti in onore di Sabatino Majorano (pp. 129–143). Bologna: EDB.
  Google Scholar

Carbajo-Núñez, M. (2023). La fraternità universale. Radici francescane di Fratelli tutti. Napoli: EDI.
  Google Scholar

Cavoukian, A. (2020). Understanding How to Implement Privacy by Design, One Step at a Time. IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine, 9, 78–82.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/MCE.2019.2953739   Google Scholar

Code of Federal Regulations. (2025). Part 312 – Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (22.04.2025). Recuperato da: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-16/chapter-I/subchapter-C/part-312.
  Google Scholar

CoreLogic. (s.d.). CoreLogic Score [glossario]. Recuperato da: https://twia.msbcommercial.com/Help/Content/Resources/Glossary/CoreLogic_Score.htm.
  Google Scholar

Council of Europe. (2020). Netherlands – Report of the Childcare Allowance Parliamentary Inquiry Committee entitled “Unprecedented injustice” (Ongekend onrecht) (17.12.2020). Recuperato da: https://www.coe.int/en/web/venice-commission/-/CDL-REF(2021)073-e.
  Google Scholar

Dicastero per la Dottrina della Fede, Dicastero per la Cultura e l’Educazione. (2025). Antiqua et Nova. Nota sul rapporto tra intelligenza artificiale e intelligenza umana. Recuperato da: https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_ddf_doc_20250128_antiqua-et-nova_it.html.
  Google Scholar

Euronews. (2024). Países Bajos multa a Clearview AI por construir una base de datos ilegal (3.09.2024). Recuperato da: https://es.euronews.com/next/2024/09/03/paises-bajos-multa-a-clearview-ai-porconstruir-una-base-de-datos-ilegal.
  Google Scholar

Federación de Asociaciones de Periodistas de España (FAPE). (s.d.). Código deontológico. Recuperato da: https://fape.es/home/codigo-deontologico-1/.
  Google Scholar

Federal Trade Commission (FTC). (2023). FTC and DOJ Charge Amazon with Violating Children’s Privacy Law by Keeping Kids’ Alexa Voice Recordings Forever and Undermining Parents’ Deletion Requests. Recuperato da: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/05/ftc-doj-charge-amazon-violating-childrens-privacy-law-keeping-kids-alexa-voice-recordings-forever.
  Google Scholar

Federal Trade Commission (FTC). (2024). Staff Report. A look behind the Screens: Examining the data practices of social media and video streaming services (Sept. 2024). Recuperato da: https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/Social-Media-6b-Report-9-11-2024.pdf.
  Google Scholar

Feldman, D., Haber, E. (2020). Measuring and protecting privacy in the Always-on era. Berkeley Technology Law Journal, 5, 197–249.
  Google Scholar

Feldstein, S. (2020). State surveillance and implications for children. UNICEF Issue Brief, 1 (Aug. 2020). Recuperato da: https://www.unicef.org/innocenti/media/1136/file/UNICEF-Global-Insight-data-governance-surveillance-issue-brief-2020.pdf.
  Google Scholar

Fisher, C., Lovell, A. (2003). Business ethics and values. Essex: Prentice Hall.
  Google Scholar

Francesco. (2016). Messaggio per la 50ª Giornata Mondiale delle Comunicazioni Sociali (24.01.2016). L’Osservatore Romano, 17 (23.01.2016), 7.
  Google Scholar

Francesco. (2020). Fratelli tutti. Lettera enciclica (3.10.2020). Città del Vaticano: LEV. [AAS 112 (2020) 969–1074].
  Google Scholar

Giannakakis, I. (2019). Privacy by Design and By Default. A Practical Guide for the Digital Era. Saarbrücken: LAP.
  Google Scholar

Gunter, B. (2003). News and the Net. London: Routledge.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781410607393   Google Scholar

Ho, S., Burke, G. (2023). Child welfare algorithm faces Justice Department scrutiny (1.02.2023). Recuperato da: https://apnews.com/article/justice-scrutinizes-pittsburgh-child-welfare-ai-tool-4f-61f45bfc3245fd2556e886c2da988b.
  Google Scholar

International Organization for Standardization (ISO). (s.d.). ISO/IEC 27090. Recuperato da: https://www.iso.org/standard/56581.html.
  Google Scholar

Jondec Briones, H. P. et al. (2024). El uso ilícito de las técnicas de inteligencia artificial y la necesidad de su regulación: el deepfake. Vniversitas Jurídica, 73. https://doi.org/10.11144/Javeriana.vj73.uiti.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.11144/Javeriana.vj73.uiti   Google Scholar

Laas, K., Davis, M., Hildt, E. (edd.). (2022). Codes of ethics and ethical guidelines: emerging technologies, changing fields [eBook]. Cham: Springer.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86201-5   Google Scholar

Miladi, N. (2022). Global media ethics and the digital revolution. London: Routledge.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003203551   Google Scholar

Miller, B. (2024). Reporting by the code: journalistic ethics and responsibilities. London: SAGE.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4135/9781071925119   Google Scholar

Periodismo automatizado. (s.d.). in Wikipedia. Recuperato da: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodismo_automatizado.
  Google Scholar

Powers, B., Vogeli, C., Mullainathan, S. (2019). Dissecting racial bias in an algorithm used to manage the health of populations. Science, 366(6464), 447–453.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aax2342   Google Scholar

Singh, P. P. (2018). European codes of journalism ethics. New Delhi: Global Open University.
  Google Scholar

U.S. Department of Justice. (2021). Press release: Justice department announces new initiative to combat redlining (22.10.2021). Recuperato da: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-new-initiative-combat-redlining.
  Google Scholar


Published
2026-06-30

Cited by

Carbajo-Núñez, M. (2026). Ethics and Family Privacy in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. Warsaw Theological Studies, 39(1), 17–30. https://doi.org/10.30439/WST.2026.1.2

Authors

Martín Carbajo-Núñez 
mcarbajon@gmail.com
Pontifical University Antonianum, Rome, Italy Italy
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2814-5688

Rev. Prof. Martín Carbajo-Núñez OFM, PhD currently teaches ethics and communication at two pontifical universities in Rome: the Antonianum (PUA) and the Alfonsianum (PUL). At the PUA, he served for three years as Vice-Rector and as Rector Magnificus ad interim. He also teaches regularly in Spain and in the United States. He holds a doctorate in Moral Theology (PUL), a degree in Germanic Philology, and a master's degree in Social Communication (Gregorian University, Rome); he is also a certified IT technician. Most of Martín Carbajo-Núñez's publications (56 books and over 250 articles) are listed at www.antoniano.org.



Statistics

Abstract views: 0
PDF downloads: 1


License

Copyright (c) 2026 Martín Carbajo-Núñez

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The journal is available free-of-charge and according to the Open Access regulations (as a PDF file on the website). The authors do not incur any costs related to publication. The journal is published in accordance with the Creative Commons license standard:  CC BY-ND 4.0 (Attribution – NoDerivatives 4.0 International)  and does not follow a concrete policy of conducting research. By submitting the article, the author gives the consent to such a form of sharing the text. The authors of the published articles retain their copyrights.