Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what discussions she has had with Ofcom on whether Ofcom has established whether Meta carried out a risk assessment before the recent roll out of its new AI image-generation feature; and whether the regulator judged that assessment to be suitable and sufficient, as required under the Online Safety Act.

It is essential that AI providers keep users safe. The Online Safety Act requires regulated services to assess and mitigate risks to users, including protecting all users from illegal content, and children from content which is harmful or age-inappropriate.

AI services are already in scope of the Online Safety Act where they meet the definition of a regulated user-to-user service or search service. And through the Crime and Policing Act, we have taken powers to bring currently unregulated AI services into scope of the Online Safety Act’s illegal content duties.

The Government engages regularly with Ofcom on implementation of the Online Safety Act. It is for Ofcom to determine whether individual providers have met their legal obligations and whether risk assessments are suitable and sufficient.