‘We shall see’: eSafety Commissioner unsure of safe return to US

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Australia’s social media watchdog cannot confirm she would be safe from prosecution if she returns to the US following her social media crackdown, as the US Congress demands she testify about her attempts to mount a “global censorship regime”.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Friday doubled down on eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant’s work policing social media companies, including restrictions on artificial intelligence generating sexualised images without consent and Australia’s ban on social media for under-16s.

eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant is considering US threats.

Republican Congressman Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, repeatedly summoned Inman Grant to testify before Congress, while the commissioner says she is being pursued over her delivery of the government’s online intervention agenda.

“We’re engaging with chairman Jordan and the committee, and no, no determination has been made yet. But I think I’ll defer to the government. [Jordan has] asked me questions about my regulatory role, but he also has expressed concerns about the policies and laws of this country, of which I’m not the right person to, I guess, carry the water on those things,” Inman Grant told a Brisbane press conference on Friday.

It is understood that the Australian government has spoken with American officials on the matter. Asked about what the government was doing to protect the commissioner, Albanese praised Inman Grant, saying he endorsed her work.

“I think she’s doing a terrific job ... We extended the [commissioner’s] funding, and she’s now leading what is world-leading activity, something of which I think Australia can be proud, and I think she can be very proud, frankly, of the job that she’s doing,” Albanese said at the same press conference.

Jordan has published two letters since November demanding that Inman Grant, who holds both American and Australian citizenship, testify before the committee. In his letters, Jordan said the commissioner was seeking to “implement a global censorship regime” and accused her of harassing American companies.

His second deadline for her to testify before congress passed on January 13, but she has not yet appeared. When asked whether she felt she could safely return to the country of her birth, Inman Grant told journalists on Friday: “We shall see”.

In an ongoing stoush with Elon Musk’s social media platform X, Inman Grant has issued information notices to the social media service to ask what steps it has taken to prevent the creation of child abuse material.

The second push in a week comes after eSafety announced it would investigate the surge in the creation of sexually explicit images related to both adults and children through the platform’s AI tool, Grok.

X has this week moved to block the “nudifying” of images of real people, and moved Grok to its paid service after it was previously available to users for free.

New codes coming into force on March 9 will compel AI services, among others, to limit children’s access to sexually explicit content, as well as violent material and themes related to self-harm and suicide.

These regulations follow the eSafety commission’s enforcement action against a UK-based company that offered two widely used nudify services that allowed its users to manipulate photos of real people.

These services had attracted about 100,000 visitors a month in Australia, and eSafety said they had been used to generate explicit deepfake images of students in Australian schools. The sites were withdrawn from Australia in November after an official warning from eSafety.

Overnight, the commissioner announced that 4.7 million accounts had been shut down because they were connected to underage users.

Asked about widespread reports that many teens were easily circumventing the ban, the commissioner said investigations were ongoing but all 10 restricted social media platforms were complying with the regulations.

She argued that saying the ban wasn’t working because teens were getting around it was like saying speed limits were useless when people still speed.