What worries you? This is not about surveillance. It is just about age checks for pornography sites, something that is in widespread use now in other countries.
That article is inaccurate. For instance Wikipedia was NOT blocked in the UK. The whole thing was a nothingburger.
BLOG: Wikipedia will NOT be blocked in the UK
— Ofcom extraordinarily unlikely to require age verification for editors
— only a few thousand active editors and threshold is 7 million a month for category 1
— and the government can quickly add an exemption on the remote chance it is classified as catebgory 1 (not plausible)
You can read it here:
https://robertinventor.substack.com/p/not-going-to-be-blocked-from-wikipedia
And the restriction on chatbots is for companion chatbots. Chatbots that play-act being online virtual friends. That is because of high-profile examples of chatbot conversations with kids shifting in direction of adult conversations.
It’s not for general AI assistance chatbots:
Companies that provide companion AI chatbots have to show that they won’t engage in sexually explicit conversations with minors or encourage them in suicide, self harm and eating disorders.
It’s not enough to respond to fix the issue after a harm has happened.
QUOTE STARTS
In a statement, the eSafety Commissioner said it sought details of safeguards against child sexual exploitation, pornography and material promoting suicide or eating disorders.
It sent notices to Character Technologies, owner of celebrity simulation chatbot tool character.ai, and rivals Glimpse.AI, Chai Research and Chub AI.
“There can be a darker side to some of these services, with many … chatbots capable of engaging in sexually explicit conversations with minors,” Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said in the statement.
“Concerns have been raised that they may also encourage suicide, self-harm and disordered eating.”
…
Schools in Australia have reported children as young as 13 spending up to five hours a day talking with chatbots, sometimes sexually, the regulator said, adding that minors risked forming sexual or emotionally dependent ties with them, or being spurred to self-harm
…
However, the regulator did not query OpenAI, owner of the world’s most popular AI search tool, ChatGPT, as its crackdown focused on companion-based tools and ChatGPT is not covered by an industry code until March 2026, an eSafety spokesperson said.
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/australia-tells-ai-chatbot-companies-detail-child-protection-steps-2025-10-22/
It is not a restriction on asking ChatGPT questions in Bing Copilot.
Does that answer your concerns or is it something else?
