Prince Harry was forced off the stage at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York on Wednesday about seven minutes into a speech warning about artificial intelligence, after the teleprompter carrying his remarks failed.
The Duke of Sussex, 42, was welcomed back roughly 40 minutes later, after other presentations had run, to deliver the rest of the address.
He opened the second half by blaming the technology he had come to warn about.
“Hello again. So AI got into my speech, so I was asked to come out and finish it,” Harry said. “Interesting to see what it was so concerned about in part two.”
The prince had been speaking in the meeting’s first mainstage session, titled “Getting Disruption Right,” when he stopped mid-argument.
“The damage was already done to a generation of children and parents. We do not have years for what comes next,” he said, before a long pause. “And that’s it.”
He paced the stage briefly. Then he set his microphone down and walked off. A spokesman for the duke later confirmed a fault with the teleprompter.
Harry claimed AI reaches children in a way social media did not.
“Social media learned how to capture our attention. AI is learning how to enter our relationships,” he argued. “It doesn’t just want your attention, it wants your attachment. It wants to be the thing you confide in. The thing that remembers you. The thing that tells you it understands you. The ultimate sycophant.”
The father of Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5, showed images of children as he spoke.
“Hundreds have become thousands. Thousands of parents grieving their children,” Harry said. “Millions of families are living with the consequences of a digital revolution that moved faster than our willingness to protect them.”
Families have already taken that argument to court. Character.AI and Google settled five lawsuits in January brought by families who alleged the chatbots contributed to teen suicides and mental health crises. One was filed by an Orlando mother over her 14-year-old son. Terms were not disclosed.
Wednesday marked the duke’s first public appearance in the United States since he moved his family to Britain last month. King Charles III this month had the royal household confirm that his son and Meghan Markle remain non-working royals who will not use their titles.
Harry delivered a version of the same warning from the same stage in 2024, when he told the gathering that social media companies had grown “dangerously powerful.”
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