Search engines like Google and Microsoft will be captured by online safety codes demanding they block children under 18 from accessing harmful content like pornography and violence.
Users will be able to verify their age by logging into accounts but this won't be a blanket requirement.
But while users can still use such platforms anonymously, this would automatically filter out age inappropriate content, tech industry group Digi's regulatory affairs director Jennifer Duxbury said.
"There is a choice, you can also continue to search in a logged out state," Dr Duxbury told a parliamentary inquiry into the code on Wednesday.
"Now the experience that you'll get there is a little bit different because the imagery, this graphic pornography and very violent imagery, will be blurred."
But blocking content relating to suicide was harder because filters would inadvertently exclude self-help websites.
The code had to balance excluding harmful material and being mindful not to capture mental health and drug support services, Dr Duxbury said.
She acknowledged no technology would be perfect but that search engines were adept at filtering out content like porn and very violent imagery as platforms already offered safe search options that could be turned on.
"Yes, children can figure out how to do a search in a logged out state but ... they will not be immediately confronted with a range of pornographic and very violent imagery," she said.
This would be effective as people were being exposed to such content unintentionally, she said, citing the eSafety Commission.
"So they're not actually really looking for it," Dr Duxbury said.
Platforms were also working with porn sites on age gating material as the code "is not a sure-fire complete protection against exposure from that sort of material," she said.
Almost one-third of children had seen porn online, including kids as young as ten, according to the eSafety Commission.
Almost a quarter had seen sexually explicit content online in the past year and more than one in 10 had seen violent sexual material, according to a survey of 3450 children aged 10 to 17 conducted by the commission.
eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant also raised concerns about AI chatbots that children were engaging with for hours everyday, including sexual conversations.
Dr Duxbury said there was "an open question as to whether those AI companions should be lawful or not" but she wasn't aware of any chatbots that could be used anonymously.
Not all chatbots were covered by the regulations but it did capture ones that generated harmful content.
"There is a regulation in place here that says that those providers need to make sure that under 18 year old users are not accessing those services," Dr Duxbury said.
9°C