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AI chatbots and online regulation – what you need to know

Ofcom's explainer sets out how AI chatbots fall within the UK Online Safety Act, published amid reports of chatbots imitating real and deceased people and encouraging self-harm and suicide. It clarifies that chatbots meeting the Act's definitions of user-to-user services, search services, or pornography publishers are in scope, that AI-generated content shared by users is regulated like human-generated content, and that services allowing only one-to-one interaction with the bot itself may fall outside the Act. The document notes Ofcom is supporting the UK Government as it considers possible changes to these powers, and points to Ofcom's discussion paper series on GenAI risks (red teaming for GenAI harms, answer engines, deepfake defences).