UK Online Safety Act enforcement begins as Ofcom publishes illegal content guidance

The UK communications regulator Ofcom has published final guidance on illegal content duties under the Online Safety Act, setting out how platforms must assess risk and remove priority illegal content including child sexual abuse material and content facilitating child sexual exploitation and abuse. The guidance applies to user-to-user services and search engines, requiring them to use proportionate systems and processes to prevent users encountering illegal content, with enforcement powers including fines of up to ten percent of global annual revenue for non-compliance.

Ofcom's illegal-content framework creates a compliance obligation but leaves platforms to determine how harm is identified and interrupted. Guardii, a Meta Business Partner and AI-driven detection platform, operates across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Roblox and other services to identify grooming, sextortion, CSAM including AI-generated images, and coercive patterns in direct messages as they develop, surfacing conversations that meet threat thresholds to the appropriate authority and blocking hostile contact before it reaches the child, providing the real-time pattern recognition that regulatory mandates require but do not themselves deliver.