LONDON—Ofcom, the United Kingdom's digital regulator, announced Thursday that it is investigating the parent company of NSFW artificial intelligence platform PornHaven AI for failing to comply with the country's sweeping Online Safety Act and its age verification requirements.
Duplanto Ltd., the parent company, was probed by Ofcom enforcement investigators beginning July 30. Ofcom said the investigation's announcement was delayed due to "administrative reasons." They didn't disclose what those "administrative reasons" were, prompting the delay of the announcement.
"Ofcom’s investigation will examine whether there are reasonable grounds to believe that the provider has failed, or is failing, to comply with its duties under section 12 of the Act, which requires services to prevent children from encountering pornographic content through the use of highly effective age assurance," Ofcom stated.
Also announced on Thursday was the expansion of ongoing investigations into other companies that own adult entertainment platforms.
These two companies are AVS Group Limited and Kick Online Entertainment S.A. AVN reported on these two investigations previously. The sites owned by AVS Group are cloned from a central script supported by an ad network called Tube Corporate, AVN learned via previous reporting.
Kick Online Entertainment S.A. is the controversial owner and operator of Motherless.com. Motherless is a tube site that has been central to several controversies related to content piracy, intellectual property theft, and the distribution of non-consensual images (revenge porn, CSAM, etc.).
"As well as investigating their compliance with the requirement to introduce age checks for pornographic content, we are now investigating their failure to respond to statutory information notices from Ofcom," said the regulator. "We are now gathering and analysing evidence to see whether our rules have been broken."
Kick/Motherless has been targeted by Ofcom investigations before. Under the Online Safety Act, online platforms that share "legal but harmful" content must implement a plan to counter CSAM, NCII, and other criminal materials.
