JESS PHILLIPS: Sexual abuse occurs on-line at industrial scale – this should finish now

Home Office Minister Jess Phillips writes for the Mirror on how tech companies and abusers have ‘carried on making money while women pay the price’ as she announces a new crackdown

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Every day, women and girls have pictures of their faces stripped from their bodies and grafted onto intimate images using Artificial Intelligence.

These images are shared in WhatsApp groups, Telegram channels, the darkest corners of the internet and mainstream porn websites, without consent and too often without consequence.

The creation and sharing of these images can have devastating impact on survivors. For too long, those responsible for hosting and profiting from this vile content have avoided responsibility. That must end now.

Let me be absolutely clear: This is sexual abuse. It is violence against women and girls. And it is happening online at industrial scale.

For years, tech companies and abusers alike have hidden behind complexity, claiming nothing can be done. Quietly, they have carried on making money while women pay the price.

As part of this government’s mission to halve violence against women and girls in a decade, we have already brought forward some of the toughest online safety laws anywhere in the world.

But accountability will not stop with the individual user.

Today, we are announcing that senior managers at porn companies will also be criminally responsible if their platforms fail to meet Ofcom’s legal duty to remove non‑consensual intimate images.

If that content stays up, those in charge will no longer be able to shrug their shoulders. They can expect to face time behind bars.

This approach is bold because the harm is real. It goes further than anything MPs have previously called for, and it sends a simple message – if you profit from abusing women online, you will face the law.

This builds upon the raft of measures we have already introduced through the Crime and Policing Bill.

We are criminalising the creation and supply of so‑called “nudification” tools used to generate intimate images of others without consent, making those responsible liable for up to three years in prison and a substantial fine.

We have also created a new offence to ban the creation and solicitation of sexually explicit deepfake images of adults, making clear that hiding behind a screen does not place abusers beyond the reach of the law.

This builds on existing offences for sharing or threatening to share intimate images without consent, including deepfakes.

And where children are concerned, we have gone further still. It will soon be illegal to possess, create or distribute AI tools designed to generate child sexual abuse material, punishable by up to five years in prison.

We have also introduced new laws to ban sickening so‑called AI “paedophile manuals” – materials that exist for the sole purpose of teaching people how to use artificial intelligence to sexually abuse children.

For years, responsibility has been dodged and denied. Survivors and campaigners have been fobbed off with the same tired excuses, that technology moves too fast, that regulation is too hard, that policing the internet is impossible.

But I have spent my career standing with victims in refuges, courtrooms, and my inbox late at night. I know what this abuse does. And when the government fails to act, they are complicit.

This government is choosing a side.

We will deploy the full power of the state to deliver the largest crackdown on violence against women and girls – both offline and online – in British history.

Not guidance. Not voluntary codes. These laws will have consequences.