UK Pushes Law To Make Apple and Google Block Children From Sending or Viewing Nude Images on Smartphones

The government is drawing up laws that would force Apple and Google to stop children sending or receiving nude images on their phones, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told MPs on 8 September.

Nandy said ministers had given the two companies a clear ultimatum: build effective safeguards into their devices and app stores, or face legal compulsion to do so. Officials said the plan would require further legislation, expected to be introduced later this year.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham backed the approach, saying the technology already exists to prevent children from sharing explicit images and that firms with the resources of Apple and Google had no excuse not to deploy it. Former prime minister Sir Keir Starmer, who first raised the issue with the companies while in office, said he had pressed both firms directly to act faster.

Tech Giants Face Growing Political Pressure

The intervention follows years of warnings from child safety groups. The Internet Watch Foundation said it had identified 140,000 pieces of content last year involving self-generated child sexual abuse imagery, much of it produced using smartphones before being shared or intercepted online.

Safeguarding minister Jess Phillips said she wanted other countries to follow the UK's lead 'before too long', arguing that children should not have to rely on patchy protections that vary by jurisdiction. Analysts have separately raised concerns that predators could shift towards jurisdictions with weaker safeguards if the UK moves alone, though ministers have not made this argument explicitly.

Both companies said they were already working on the issue. Google pointed to existing safety features in Android and its app store, while Apple said it had shared plans with UK officials to strengthen Communication Safety and other tools even further to help keep children safe. Neither company committed to a timetable for new measures.

Privacy Fears Over On-Device Scanning

Privacy campaigners, including the Open Rights Group, argue the UK should not become a testing ground for intrusive scanning technology, warning that image-detection tools capable of identifying nude photographs on a device could be repurposed or misused.

Lukasz Olejnik, an independent cybersecurity researcher, described such client-side scanning systems as, at best, the least damaging of a set of imperfect options, noting that any system built to detect one category of content could in principle be adapted to detect others.

Child safety campaigner Rachel Swirsky said the priority had to be prevention rather than detection after the fact, and that any technical solution needed to be paired with education for children and parents.

Unanswered Questions for Apple, Google and the UK

One unresolved question is how far a single country can lean on Apple and Google before the companies decide the UK market is more trouble than it is worth. Both firms operate under global product architectures, and UK-specific requirements could mean building bespoke systems solely for British users, which could be costly even for companies of their size.

Nandy told MPs the government preferred a negotiated solution but would not rule out compelling compliance through law if voluntary progress stalled. She said further details of the legislation, including timing and scope, would be set out once officials had concluded discussions with the two companies.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport said it expected to publish more detail on the proposed legislation in the coming months.