Prime Minister Keir Starmer\u2019s<\/a> government last month launched a consultation on a social media ban for children under 16 and is now working to change legislation so it could bring in any changes within months of the consultation concluding.<\/p>\nSpain, Greece and Slovenia have also said they are working on bans after Australia became the first country in the world to block access to under 16s. Scrutiny has since intensified further after Elon Musk\u2019s flagship AI chatbot Grok was found to be generating nonconsensual sexualised images.<\/p>\n
Britain\u2019s 2023 Online Safety Act is one of the world\u2019s strictest safety regimes, but it does not cover one-to-one interactions with AI chatbots unless they share information with other users, a loophole technology minister Liz Kendall said would soon be closed.<\/p>\n
Britain cannot allow regulatory gaps to persist after the act took nearly eight years to pass and come into force, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am concerned about these AI chatbots\u2026 as is the prime minister, about the impact that\u2019s having on children and young people,\u201d Kendall told Times Radio, saying some children were forming one-to-one relationships with AI systems that were not designed with child safety in mind.<\/p>\n
She said the government would set out its proposals before June.<\/p>\n
Speaking to British media on Monday, Kendall said tech firms would be responsible for ensuring their systems complied with British law.<\/p>\n
The government would also consult on changes to bring in automatic data-preservation orders when a child dies, allowing investigators to secure key online evidence \u2014 a measure long sought by bereaved families. The consultation would also consider powers to curb \u201cstranger pairing\u201d on gaming consoles and to block the sending or receiving of nude images.<\/p>\n
The new measures will be introduced as an amendment to existing crime and child-protection legislation being considered by parliament.<\/p>\n
While aimed at shielding children, such measures often have knock-on implications for adults\u2019 privacy and ability to access services, and have led to tension with the U.S. over limits on free speech and regulatory reach.<\/p>\n
Some major pornography sites have blocked British users rather than carry out age checks, but those blocks can be circumvented by using readily available virtual private networks, which the government is considering restricting for minors.<\/p>\n
Many parents and safety advocates back a social media ban for children, but Kendall said some child-protection groups worry it could push harmful activity into less regulated spaces or create a sharp \u201ccliff edge\u201d at 16. She added that the government still needed to define legally what counts as social media before any ban can take effect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain could bring in an Australian-style ban on social media for children under 16 as early as this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":428441,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-428440","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}