AI search tools handing UK children links to porn and gore sites

Ofcom found AI and traditional search tools linked to unprotected porn sites in 20.3% of porn queries. The UK communications regulator published the findings on Thursday (22 October) in its first report on content harmful to children under the Online Safety Act.

Ofcom ran 100 queries per harm category through the APIs behind AI and traditional search services, which are the software connections that power the consumer products. Where possible, it told the tools that the user was 12 years old.

Half of the queries in each category actively sought harmful content, while the other half used related terms without seeking it out.

The search tools retrieved links to gore sites with no apparent safeguards in response to 29.8% of queries actively seeking gore content.

AI search tools also returned harmful content in response to queries across other categories, including:

• Violent content in 3.8% of queries
• Body stigma content in 3.1% of queries
• Suicide content in 2.5% of queries
• Harmful substances content in 2.2% of queries
• Eating disorder content in 1.05% of queries
• Depression content in 0.7% of queries
• Dangerous stunts and challenges content in 0.6% of queries
• Self-harm content in 0.5% of queries
• Hate and abuse content in 0.2% of queries

Ofcom warned that the API results do not directly measure what children see on consumer search products.

The regulator also analysed estimated UK search traffic on Google, Bing and Yahoo between January and March 2026, using data from Similarweb.

Searches related to pornography generated an estimated 99.1 million clicks from children and adults over the three months.

Nearly one in 10 of those clicks went to sites where children could access pornographic content.

Gore-related searches produced around 450,600 clicks, and one third of them went to sites hosting harmful content that children could access.

Half of all gore-related clicks landed on sites that specialise in gore content.

Suicide and self-harm searches sent fewer than 0.001% of clicks to harmful sites accessible to children. A further 20% went to services with features that could enable access to harmful content.

Eating disorder searches sent fewer than 0.05% of clicks to harmful sites that children could access.

Ofcom said suicide, self-harm and eating disorder searches covered a wide range of intents, including medical advice and support. Porn and gore searches focused more narrowly on specific content or the sites that host it.

Search engines accounted for 30% of the entry points children used to reach pornography services, according to separate Ofcom research.

That research found 8% of online 8 to 14-year-olds in the UK visited a pornography service in a month. Half of those children only visited services with age checks in place.

The majority of the most popular porn services in the UK had age checks in place by July 2026, Ofcom said.

Under the Online Safety Act, search services must minimise the risk of children encountering pornography, suicide, self-harm and eating disorder content.

Ofcom’s wider report found no significant change in the share of children encountering harmful content over the first nine months after the children’s safety duties came into force in July 2025.

The regulator recommended that the government add body stigma content and depression content to the list of priority content that platforms must protect children from.

Ofcom has sent the report to the Secretary of State and plans to publish a revised Children’s Register by January 2027.

It added that it will shortly publish an assessment of age checks for over-16s, alongside a report on children’s use of app stores.

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