Prime Minister Keir Starmer has unveiled the government’s plans to introduce legislation to regulate AI chatbots and potentially social media as part of a pledge to protect children from online harm.
Mr Starmer said the government would “strengthen” existing online safety laws to ensure popular chatbots were covered. The announcement follows UK government action against the X-based chatbot Grok.
In addition to launching a multi-regulatory investigation into an Elon Musk-owned chatbot that was used to generate illegally explicit images, including those depicting minors, the government required X to remove the ability to edit images in this way using Grok and temporarily banned non-subscribers from accessing the image edits.
“It is vital that our rules keep up with the rapid pace of technological change. This builds on the recent steps we have taken to ban nudity apps and criminalize the creation of intimate images without consent,” the Prime Minister wrote in a new blog post.
As well as increasing scrutiny of AI chatbots, Mr Starmer provided another sign that a total ban on social media for under-16s could become a reality, following similar decisions in Australia and Spain.
The government is currently awaiting a consultation to consider the best approach to protecting young people from the harmful effects of social media, and the Prime Minister has confirmed an Australian-style ban is on the cards.
He wrote that if the evidence suggests there is a need, the government will “introduce a minimum age for social media in the coming months to prevent children from accessing harmful social media”.
Other possible consequences include restricting certain social media features for children, such as infinite scrolling algorithms or autoplay, or even imposing restrictions on children’s access to VPNs to circumvent geographic age restrictions.
