Which AI Sites Block the UK and Australia, and Why: The Age-Verification Map, in Each Site's Own Words

In one week in July 2025, three of the largest sites in AI roleplay and image generation switched off the United Kingdom. They did not do it quietly. Civitai posted a notice with a cut-off time. Janitor AI's founder wrote a letter naming the fines. PygmalionAI published a post that listed who had already gone. The cause was a date, 25 July 2025, when the UK's Online Safety Act began to require age assurance from platforms carrying adult user content, and the pattern repeated in Australia through late 2025 and into 2026 under the eSafety Commissioner's codes.

A year on, the map is messy: some sites still block, some have replaced the block with age verification, some fence content by country, and some never blocked at all. This page is the map, built from each site's own announcements and documentation plus two checks we ran from a UK address. It ends with what an IP address does and does not change, because we sell them, and on this subject the honest answer is longer than a sales pitch.

The week of 25 July 2025

The law's own timetable set the date. On 20 July 2025 Janitor AI's founder posted Tough news for our UK users: access from the UK would be blocked from 24 July 2025 at 11:59 pm UTC, because the Act was, in the founder's words, not just content moderation but a complete regulatory framework, with legal assessments, biometric ID verification, fines of up to GBP 18 million and personal criminal liability for the team. The same day, Civitai's notice went up: as of 24 July 2025 at 11:59 PM UTC, Civitai is no longer accessible to users in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, because the Act imposes strict requirements including biometric age checks, complex legal risk assessments and personal liability for staff. On 22 July, PygmalionAI's post announced its own geoblock for the 25th and recorded that JanitorAI, ChubAI and Civitai had already done this decision on their end.

The map, as of 24 August 2026

Two of those rows we checked ourselves on 24 August 2026 through a free proxy exiting in the United Kingdom. civitai.com returned its Online Safety Act notice instead of the site. chub.ai returned its normal front page, consistent with a fence inside the site rather than a block at the door. janitorai.com also loaded, consistent with the June 2026 move from blocking to verification.

The sites that chose blocking, in their words

Civitai has been the most explicit about why. Its July 2025 notice named the obligations it would not take on. In April 2026, introducing the split into civitai.com and civitai.red, the founder wrote that the countries currently blocked are not blocked because of mature content but because of compliance requirements around social features and identity verification, naming the Online Safety Act, and that the domain split does not change that. Australian users reported the same wall from 16 March 2026 and tied it to eSafety's age-restricted material codes; we could not find Civitai's own announcement of the Australia block. Details in proxies for Civitai.

Chub fenced the UK in July 2025 and then, in Australia, went further. The eSafety Commissioner's October 2025 findings record that before Chub AI geo-blocked its service from Australia on 1 October 2025, Australian users searching for some companions had been shown a message that by law some content was restricted in their country and that they should use a VPN. On 16 October 2025 eSafety issued Chub a legal notice under Australia's Online Safety Act, and its March 2026 report on four companion services noted that one company had removed its service from Australia. Users in the UK, Canada and New Zealand report the fence banner rather than a block. Details in proxies for Chub AI.

PygmalionAI blocked the UK on 25 July 2025 as an interim step, said its team would examine whether a site without adult content might qualify for an exemption, and offered refunds to UK subscribers.

The sites that chose verification

Janitor AI blocked first and verified later. Its 15 June 2026 announcement, An update for users in Brazil, Australia, and the UK, says users in those three countries need to verify their age to access the site, that this was a legal requirement rather than a choice, and describes three routes: a short video selfie for facial age estimation that runs entirely on the device, ID scanning through the provider k-ID, or AgeKey for people already verified on Discord or Snapchat. The same post says the system relies entirely on the IP address you connect with, does not track physical location or ask for an address, and receives only a yes-or-no confirmation of age.

SpicyChat documents its wall in detail. Its age-verification page says that to comply with age-related regulations in several regions the platform must confirm users meet the legal minimum age for adult content, that it uses your current connection location, the IP address, to decide whether verification is mandatory, and it lists the regions: France, the UK, Italy, Australia and twenty-six US states. Without verifying you can use the platform but adult content stays hidden. Verification is done by third-party partners, a video selfie with an ID fallback in most regions, and in most cases it only needs to be performed once for your account, regardless of the device or location you connect from. Details in proxies for SpicyChat.

PolyBuzz writes the UK into its terms: to comply with the UK Online Safety Act, UK users must complete an age-verification process before accessing the service, carried out by independent third-party providers, Ondato and Yoti, authorised to perform such checks in the UK. Its terms also say that creating extra accounts to get around a suspension results in permanent disabling.

Character.AI never blocked either country. Its under-18 change of November 2025 removed open-ended chat for minors through age assurance on the account, starting in the United States with other countries to follow, and it stayed in Australia after the eSafety notice. Details in proxies for Character.AI.

Beyond the two countries

The same machinery reaches further than the headline. SpicyChat's wall fires for France, Italy and twenty-six US states with age-verification laws for adult content, not only the UK and Australia. Janitor AI's verification also covers Brazil, and its April 2026 rollout there and in Australia preceded the UK by seven weeks. And any site that chose blocking over verification treats every address its geolocation places in a blocked country the same way, whether or not the person is really there: geolocation databases disagree with each other, as we saw when Google Flow placed two exits outside countries our own database put them in.

What an address changes, and what it does not

We sell proxies, so this is the part to read slowly.

What an address changes. Almost every row in the map reads the connecting address. Civitai's block, Chub's fence and Australia block, PygmalionAI's block, SpicyChat's decision whether to show the wall, and Janitor's decision whether to require verification are all made from the country of the IP. An address in a country without the rule shows the unfenced site, and before its Australia block Chub's own banner told users so.

What it does not change. The law where you live, first. These walls exist because a jurisdiction demanded age assurance for adult content, and whether reaching around the wall is lawful for you is a question about your jurisdiction that no proxy seller can answer, and we will not pretend to. The contracts, second: Civitai's terms prohibit access from places where it is illegal, and Suno, Replika and Talkie write into theirs that a user blocked by IP address may not circumvent the block with a proxy IP address. And your age, third: on every verification-based site the check is on the account, and no address changes who holds it. We do not help anyone under the legal age around any of this.

For an adult, verify once

On every site that offers verification, it beats a proxy, and not narrowly. SpicyChat says the check is done once per account and holds regardless of device or location. Janitor's system runs facial estimation on your own device or accepts an existing AgeKey, and returns only a yes or no. Five minutes, then finished, on any network, in any country, forever. A proxy has to be up every session, costs money every month, is one dropped connection away from putting the wall back, and on several of these sites is the exact measure the terms tell you not to use.

Where verification is not offered, on Civitai and, in Australia, on Chub, the site has decided not to serve the country, and the honest description of an address from elsewhere is that it steps around that decision. We have written the mechanism into the pages on each site because people ask; we have not written a recommendation, because there is not one to give.

What we sell into, and what we do not

The legitimate purchases in this cluster are the ordinary ones: a filtered school or office network in a country where the site is offered, a paid account that should appear from one place, an edge that distrusts a shared address. For those, our ISP addresses ($2.70/IP a month each) and residential sessions (from $0.44/GB) are the tools, billed on use. For an adult facing an age wall, the recommendation is the wall's own button. For anyone else, the recommendation is no.

Sources

• Janitor AI, Tough news for our UK users, 20 July 2025, and An update for users in Brazil, Australia, and the UK, 15 June 2026.
• Civitai's UK block notice as reproduced on 26 July 2025 in the Privacy Guides community; Civitai, Two front doors, 9 April 2026; Civitai user articles on the Australia block, 14 to 15 March 2026 (one, two); Civitai Terms of Service, 19 August 2026.
• PygmalionAI, UK geoblock, 22 July 2025.
• eSafety Commissioner, findings on AI companion services, October 2025; Digital Policy Alert, legal notice to Chub AI, 16 October 2025; BiometricUpdate, companion chatbots not doing enough to protect kids, 26 March 2026.
• SpicyChat documentation, Age Verification: the regions, the IP-based decision, and the once-per-account rule.
• PolyBuzz, Terms of Use, updated 1 June 2026.
• Character.AI, October 2025 announcement on under-18 chat.
• Suno Terms of Service, Replika Terms of Service and Talkie Terms of Service: the clauses on circumventing IP blocks with proxy IP addresses.
• HProxy checks, 24 August 2026: requests for civitai.com, chub.ai and janitorai.com through a free proxy exiting in the United Kingdom.