The UK government said Monday that it would include AI chatbots in online safety laws, closing a loophole exposed afterElon Musk’sAI chatbot Grok was used to create sexualised deepfakes.
Providers of chatbots will be responsible for preventing them from generating illegal or harmful content, extending rules that currently apply only to content shared between users on social media.
It follows an international backlash against Grok for letting people create and share sexualised pictures of women and children using simple text prompts.
“The new measures announced today include crackdown on vile illegal content created by AI,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in a statement ahead of a speech on the matter Monday.
“The government will move fast to shut a legal loophole and force all AI chatbot providers to abide by illegal content duties in the Online Safety Act or face the consequences of breaking the law,” he said.
Under the Online Safety Act, which entered force in July, platforms hosting potentially harmful content are required to implement strict age verification through tools such as facial imagery or credit card checks.
It is also illegal for sites to create or share non-consensual intimate images, or child sexual abuse material, including sexual deepfakes created with AI.
In January, Britain’s media regulator Ofcom opened a probe into the social media platform X, which hosts Grok, for failing to meet its safety obligations.
The country’s data watchdog has launched a wider investigation into Musk’s X and xAI — which developed the Grok AI tool — to see whether the companies complied with personal data law when it came to Grok’s generation of sexualised deepfakes.
Ofcom has noted that not all AI chatbots are regulated under the Online Safety Act, including those which “only allow people to interact with thechatbotitself and no other users”.
Source: Insider Paper
