British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday issued a stark warning against revenge porn, ordering social media companies to remove explicit content from their platforms within 48 hours.
The British leader called non-consensual intimate images “absolutely disgusting” and also threatened to block platforms in the UK that do not comply with government regulations, he told The Guardian.
Starmer also said the government acted quickly to stop the abuse of AI tool Grok after some users were known to generate “shameful” images using the platform’s image generation feature.
“Today we’re going even further. We’re calling on social media companies to remove any objectionable intimate images within 48 hours,” X (formerly Twitter) said in a post.
He further acknowledged that this is only the first step and that much more needs to be done about this problem. “Violence against women and girls has no place in our society. We must eradicate it,” he added.
What action will be taken in case of non-compliance?
Social media companies could face millions in fines or even be banned in the UK if they don’t remove objectionable intimate images after victims are formally notified, according to a Guardian report.
He said the platforms would be held accountable if such content continued to spread or was republished despite clear notice to those affected, underscoring the government’s push for tougher enforcement and faster resolution.
The UK leader went on to add that changes would be made to the Crime and Policing Act to also regulate AI chatbots such as X’s Grok, which generated non-consensual images of women in bikinis or in compromising positions until the government threatened to sue Elon Musk’s company.
“The burden of combating abuse must no longer fall on the victims. It must fall on the perpetrators and on the societies that cause the harm,” he told reporters.
Grok AI has faced increasing criticism and regulatory scrutiny in several other countries for its ability to produce sexualized and non-consensual images of women, including Ireland, India, Malaysia, as well as the European Union.
How can victims report such content?
Victims of revenge porn will be able to report the images either directly to tech companies or the Office of Communications (Ofcom), according to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. Once a complaint is made, alerts can be sent to multiple platforms to ensure that images are removed and re-shared elsewhere more quickly.
Ofcom, the UK’s independent regulator and competition authority for the communications industry, has been given responsibility for enforcing a ban on such images, with the aim of relieving victims of having to report the same image potentially thousands of times as it is constantly reposted, the Guardian reported.