Ofcom investigates AI companion chatbot service

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Online safety Illegal and harmful content Protecting children News and updates News Published:
15 January 2026
- Snapchat improves risk assessment as result of Ofcom enforcement action
Ofcom has today opened an investigation into Novi Ltd, which provides an AI character companion chatbot service, in relation to its compliance with age check requirements under the UK’s Online Safety Act.

Under the Online Safety Act, sites that allow pornographic material must use highly effective age assurance to prevent children from readily accessing that content. We will now gather and analyse evidence to determine whether Novi Ltd has breach ed these rules on an AI character companion chatbot service it operates.

I f we consider that a compliance failure has taken place, we will issue a provisional decision to the company, who will then have an opportunity to respond to our findings in full, as required by the Act, before we make our final decision. [1]

Since duties under the Act came into force last year, we have launched investigations into 9 4 sites and apps in total. [2]

Snapchat improves risk assessment

Separately, Ofcom has today confirmed that – in direct response to action from our enforcement team – Snapchat has materially improved its illegal content risk assessment, which will ensure it is required to implement a broad range of safety measures, in line with our codes of practice, to protect the UK public.

Risk assessments are fundamental to keeping users safer online. In order to put in place appropriate safety measures to protect people, especially children, providers must first understand how harm could take place on their platforms, and how their user-base, features and other characteristics could increase those risks of harm.

As the UK’s independent online safety watchdog, part of Ofcom’s job is to make sure tech firms carry out suitable and sufficient risk assessments, in line with our guidance.

In 2025 we reviewed 104 risk assessments from a range of large and small services, spanning over 10,000 pages. We told 11 platforms that we had serious concerns with their risk assessments, and all submitted revised versions or supplementary information.

After reviewing Snapchat’s illegal content risk assessment, we raised concerns about its suitability and sufficiency. Snapchat provided a revised version in response, but these initial changes still failed to adequately address our concerns. In particular, we remained of the view that Snapchat’s assessment of risk did not accurately reflect the likelihood of illegal content or activity occurring on the platform.

We informed Snapchat that we were considering enforcement action, in response to which it committed to conducting a full revision of its risk assessment, including a comprehensive reassessment of the risk levels it had previously assigned across all identified harms.

Given Snapchat’s willingness to address our concerns constructively and promptly, we entered Snapchat into a formal process known as compliance remediation – providing the company with one final opportunity to come into compliance.[3]

As a result, we saw a significant change in its revised risk assessment to address our concerns, which will ensure Snapchat must put a broad range of safety measures in place, commensurate with the risks to UK users that is has identified. We will now be scrutinising the measures Snapchat puts in place, including how effective they are at protecting people from harm.

Snapchat is the only platform of the 11 from which we requested revised risk assessments or supplementary information to have been taken through compliance remediation.

Suzanne Cater, Director of Enforcement at Ofcom, said: “Making sure tech firms properly assess the risks of harm to their users, and then take the necessary steps to mitigate those risks, is at the very heart of the Online Safety Act. We’ve reviewed thousands of pages of risk assessments from companies across the sector and where we’ve seen platforms fall short, we’ve taken action to drive change.

“We left Snap’s senior management under no illusions about what we expect of them, and that we were ready to take formal enforcement action if they didn’t radically improve their approach to assessing and acknowledging the risks of illegal content or activity on Snapchat. This prompted Snap to engage constructively with us, and our action resulted in material changes to its risk ratings across the board, which will ensure that Snapchat must implement all measures necessary to address the risks identified on its platform.”

Notes to editors

1. In late 2025, Novi’s service had an approximate global reach of nearly 6.5 million monthly users, and between 100,000 and 300,000 monthly users in the UK.
2. Where we identify compliance failures, we can require platforms to take specific steps to come into compliance. We can also impose fines of up to £18 million or 10% of qualifying worldwide revenue, whichever is greater. Where appropriate and proportionate, in the most serious cases, we can seek a court order for ‘business disruption measures’, such as requiring payment providers or advertisers to withdraw their services from a platform, or requiring internet service providers to block access to a site in the UK.
3. We have also today expanded the scope of two existing investigations into the compliance of pornography providers First Time Videos LLC and Sun Social Media Inc with age check requirements. We have added one further adult site operated by Sun Social Media, and are now also investigating whether First Time Videos has failed to respond adequately to a statutory information request from Ofcom.
4. Compliance remediation is a process in which providers are given an opportunity to make specific improvements with our enforcement team or face formal action. See page 11 of Ofcom’s Online Safety Enforcement Guidance.

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