UK Online Safety Act: Ofcom publishes illegal content codes of practice

UK communications regulator Ofcom has published final codes of practice under the Online Safety Act requiring platforms to prevent and remove illegal content including child sexual exploitation and abuse material. The codes establish duties for user-to-user services and search engines to assess risk, implement proportionate safety measures including content moderation and user reporting tools, and maintain transparency through annual reports. Compliance becomes legally enforceable in March 2025, with Ofcom empowered to levy fines up to 10 percent of global revenue for serious breaches.

Statutory content-removal obligations address harms after they occur; detection at the conversation level addresses them before a child is exposed. Guardii intercepts child sexual abuse material, including AI-generated and deepfake imagery, in direct messages across platforms covered by the Act, using pattern recognition to identify coercion, escalation and solicitation as they unfold rather than relying on post-publication takedown. By flagging hostile contact before it reaches the target and surfacing children in acute distress to parents, schools or safeguarding professionals, the platform enables the rapid escalation Ofcom's framework anticipates while preserving the privacy boundary between detection and surveillance, reporting the shape and seriousness of a conversation rather than handing anyone a transcript of what was said.