Ofcom says that sites providing porn in the UK must implement “highly effective” age verification processes by July 25, 2025, to ensure that users are aged 18 or over.
The UK’s communications regulation authority had already announced that age verification implementation must be in place for porn sites by July, and that some porn sites producing their own porn content had to make implementations earlier in the year.
Now, with the July 25 deadline announced, the whole online porn industry has a hard UK deadline to work to. Ofcom said it sent out letters to “hundreds” of porn sites on April 24 warning them about non-compliance.
“If people are visiting your site from the UK, you’ll likely be in scope”Ofcom
The move was part of the implementation of the UK’s Online Safety Act, designed to make the internet safer for children and “reduce online harms”. Concerns have been raised about the new rules clamping down on legitimate adult content sites and services, as well as free speech.
In the new letter, Ofcom warned porn sites that they were still responsible for ensuring robust age verification for UK users even if their sites were based abroad. “If people are visiting your site from the UK, you’ll likely be in scope, wherever in the world you’re based,” Ofcom said.
Under the new rules, companies that implement age verification processes only for sections of their sites and platforms must go through a children’s risk assessment for the sections still accessible to minors. That assessment needs to be completed by July 24, the day before the age verification deadline.
Sites that are found to have not complied with the new age verification rules face fines of up to ten percent of the company’s worldwide revenue, or £18 million ($24 million), whichever is the greater figure.
Ofcom said that in the case of continued non-compliance, the regulator may take its case to a court to seek an order to force third parties such as banks or internet service providers to disrupt a company and site’s services.
The regulator has previously said it was considering using AI facial age assessments as part of the new, more robust age verification processes that will be required from the July 25, 2025 deadline.
With the rise of online porn and other AI-assisted adult content, the UK government is seeking to crack down hard on access to material it considers potentially harmful to minors, as well as porn-related tools that could be used for nefarious purposes.
Earlier in 2025, the government said that the UK will become the first country to criminalize owning, making or distributing AI tools that are designed to create child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
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