New AI legislation was announced by the government in the King's Speech of 17 July 2024. The aim of the legislation is to "seek to establish the most appropriate legislation to place requirements on those working to develop the most powerful AI models”. Curiously, there was no elaboration on what the legislation might cover in the background briefing notes to the speech although it seems clear that any proposed legislation would be far less comprehensive than the EU's AI Act and there is widespread agreement that it will focus on safety of frontier systems.
At the Labour Party conference in September 2024, AI Minister Feryal Clark hinted legislation could well go further, saying she was "in the process of bringing forward legislation" intended to clarify the use of copyrighted materials to train AI, suggesting a consultation would take place as early as October. She has since clarified her remarks saying instead that the government is conducting a series of round tables with stakeholders to try and resolve copyright disputes between British AI companies and creatives. Speaking at The Times Tech Summit, Clark suggested an agreement could come by the end of the year and that it might take the form of an amendment to existing laws or entirely new legislation. Transparency and the right to opt out of having copyrighted materials used to train AI models are expected to be a focus of the discussions but there has also been talk of introducing an extended TDM (text and data mining) exemption similar to the one in the EU Copyright Directive – an initiative previously rejected by the then UK government in 2023 – to cover TDM for commercial purposes under certain circumstances (see here for more on this issue). Another area in which there are mixed messages is whether or not the AI Office will be put on a statutory footing.
Whatever the AI legislation contains, it will be a departure from the previous government's policy as stated in its White Paper on AI, published in August 2023, which concluded there was no need for AI-specific legislation. Just before the 2024 general election, there were, however, rumours that the Conservative government was working on AI legislation which was widely expected to make mandatory the currently voluntary commitments by leading developers of large language models/general purpose AI to submit algorithms to a safety assessment process. There were also suggestions then that copyright legislation would be amended to allow organisations and individuals to opt out of allowing LLMs to scrape their content.
It initially seemed likely that any planned legislation would not cover the public sector which may explain why Lord Clement-Jones introduced a Private Members' Bill on AI to the House of Lords on 9 September. It relates to mitigating the risks of AI use by public authorities with a focus on potential bias and automated decision making. It would require public authorities to take certain protective measures including around impact assessments, transparency, log maintenance and retention, and explainability. It would also provide for the setting up of an independent dispute resolution mechanism for allegedly unfair or disputed automated decisions. The Ada Lovelace Institute said in September that local authorities are struggling to navigate the 16 pieces of legislation and guidance which cover the use of AI in public procurement so they might indeed welcome legislation in this space and lately, there have been suggestions that public sector could be in scope of the upcoming legislative proposal.
On 15 October 2024, the UK government published a Green Paper, Invest 2035 – a Modern Industrial Strategy for consultation. As you might expect, AI is mentioned several times, mostly as an opportunity for strengthening the UK's position in sectors such as life sciences, digital and technologies, data-driven businesses and defence. The Strategy also refers to the AI Opportunities Action Plan led by Matt Clifford and launched in July 2024, which will propose an "ambitious plan to grow the AI sector and drive responsible adoption across the economy". It's not clear when this will be published but one of the areas it will consider is the possible need for regulatory reform.
If legislation was indeed being prepared before the general election, much of the work may already have been done before the current government came into power. It is, however, unclear whether or not we will see a consultation on draft legislation before the end of the year despite recent suggestions by Feryal Clark that a consultation can be expected "shortly".
