By Robert Booth
Publication Date: 2026-05-18 16:39:00
Social media, messaging platforms and online forums that post intimate abuse images – often with the intent to humiliate women and girls – will be ordered to follow new guidelines to prevent the spread.
Ofcom said it would change its codes of conduct to force service providers to identify and suppress intimate image abuse – sometimes called “revenge porn” – and crack down on AI-generated deepfakes. A wave of deepfakes occurred in January when Elon Musk’s Grok AI was widely used to create sexualized videos of women in bikinis.
Women and girls have long complained that it is difficult to remove incriminating images and videos from public websites without their consent.
The guidelines come at a time when Ofcom warned that such images were becoming increasingly common, with generative AI only making the situation worse, and said there was an “urgent need to reduce the prevalence of abuse of intimate images online”.
The new code follows a threatened legal challenge to the regulator by…
