UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is dangling the kill switch over Big Tech’s head.
Under new proposals, technology companies would have 48 hours to remove abusive images or face having their services blocked in the UK.
The same package would force platforms to detect and remove intimate images shared without consent, with fines reaching 10 per cent of worldwide revenue for those who mess about.
The move is pitched as part of a wider crackdown on violence against women and girls, landing weeks after ministers blasted Elon Musk’s xAI Grok chatbot for generating sexualised images of children.
Sir Keir said: “The online world is the frontline of the 21st century battle against violence against women and girls. That’s why my government is taking urgent action against chatbots and ‘nudification’ tools. Today we are going further, putting companies on notice so that any non-consensual image is taken down in under 48 hours,” he said.
The plan would be pushed through as an amendment to the government’s crime and policing bill, aiming to stop victims from having to report the same non-consensual image repeatedly.
In theory, once a victim reports it, the content must be removed from any platform where it appears.
Creating or sharing non-consensual intimate images would also become a so-called priority offence under the Online Safety Act, putting it in the same bracket as child abuse or terrorism.
Starmer warned Musk and other tech bosses that “no platform gets a free pass” on illegal content in the UK, as he moved to drag AI chatbots into the Online Safety Act’s scope.
That sweep explicitly covers services such as Google’s Gemini, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Grok, which means regulators will be poking at the machines as well as the humans behind them.
Meanwhile, the UK government launched a consultation last month on whether young people under 16 should be barred from social media, following Australia’s ban introduced in December.
France is close to passing something similar, while Spain, Greece, the Netherlands, and Denmark say they are gearing up to push children off the platforms.
