Ofcom has opened investigations into two pornographic services over the potential for children to access age-inappropriate content on the sites due to a lack of proper age assurance protocols.

Under the Online Safety Act, online services must ensure children cannot access pornographic content on their sites. In January, Ofcom wrote to online services that display or publish their own pornographic content to explain that the requirements for them to have highly effective age checks in place to protect children had come into force.

While many services confirmed that they were implementing, or had plans to implement the age assurance systems, certain services failed to respond to the request.

Ofcom is now opening investigations into Itai Tech Ltd – a service which runs the nudifcation site Undress.cc – and Score Internet Group LLC, which runs the site Scoreland.com. Both of these sites appear to have no highly effective age assurance in place and are potentially in breach of Online Safety Act and their duties to protect children from pornography.

Since the Online Safety Act was ratified, platforms operating in the UK have been scrambling to introduce age verification systems that do not invade user privacy while protecting children from accessing inappropriate content.

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These checks can range from providing verified photo ID to facial scanning and age verification techniques.

Platforms must prove to Ofcom that the measures they take are robust enough to keep children out of their sites.

The Children’s Commissioner has recently insisted that the government take further action, calling for an outright ban on AI apps that can create deepfake images or are capable of ‘nudification’ since they have the potential to make sexually explicit images of minors.

Still, while these measures are created to protect children, some critics say that these will push younger people, including minors, to darker corners of the web and less regulated sites with more harmful and illegal content.