British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced he will go to Parliament to seek new powers to regulate AI chatbots, and he's ready for a fight with the companies that have refused to act.
Pending public consultation, the proposed powers would allow the government to set age limits for social media, block features such as autoplay and endless scroll that keep children "hooked to their screens." It would also restrict VPN access for minors seeking to circumvent age limits.
"Unlike the Tories, who took years to pass the Online Safety Act, we will take powers that would allow us to implement a minimum age for social media in a matter of months to prevent kids from accessing harmful social media," Starmer wrote.
Evin McMullen, co-founder and CEO of Billions.Network, told Decrypt, the harm was entirely predictable.
"Loosening guardrails to juice metrics in the short term is a reckless gamble when the fallout includes child exploitation material flooding platforms,” McMullen said. “When you market 'spicy mode' as a feature and prioritize virality over safety, you're inviting exactly this kind of abuse.
“Safeguarding children and privacy isn't a bug fix,” he added.
Sunak, now a senior adviser to Microsoft, said AI deployment in the public sector should be a top government priority, noting that the UK fell from 8th to 9th in Microsoft's global rankings of workplace AI adoption between the first and second halves of 2025.
Starmer’s AI chatbot regulation, centered on protecting children online, comes as he faces political fallout over his appointment of Peter Mandelson as British ambassador to the U.S. last year.
Epstein, who died in custody in 2019, was a U.S. financier accused of trafficking and abusing underage girls.
