Debbie Heywood looks at the government's response to Matt Clifford's AI Opportunities Action Plan which downplays risk and focuses on the positive.

What's the issue?

The Conservative government decided not to legislate on AI but to develop a sector-led, risk-based approach. Towards the end of its tenure, however, there were widespread rumours it was intending to legislate on AI safety, most likely on frontier models. Shortly after the Labour government came into power, Secretary of State for Science Innovation and Technology, Peter Kyle, commissioned Matt Clifford, Chair of Advanced Research and Invention Agency, to explore strategies for building a scalable and competitive AI industry in the UK and how best to ensure widespread AI take up across the public and private sectors.

What's the development?

Matt Clifford's AI Opportunities Action Plan and the government's response to it were published on 13 January 2025. The Action Plan makes 50 recommendations, all of which the government says it will take forward, although two of which it appears to have slight reservations about – recommendation 13 to establish a copyright-cleared British media asset data training set will be subject to further consideration as to whether to take it forward, and recommendation 21 relating to immigration reforms is given qualified support.

As the government itself points out, the Plan focuses less on AI safety issues and more on leveraging AI to help with productivity and growth, and to deliver more efficient public services at lower cost. This is alongside considering infrastructure needs, upskilling and attracting top AI talent, enhancing public trust in AI, reducing barriers to uptake, while still considering safety, governance and environmental issues.

The government's response is focused around three pillars – laying the foundations for AI to flourish in the UK, boosting adoption across public and private sectors, and keeping the UK "ahead of the pack". 

Highlighted ambitions centre on:

• creating AI Growth Zones to speed up planning proposals and build more AI infrastructure
• increasing the public computing capacity twentyfold in order to embrace AI, starting with working on a new supercomputer
• creating a new UK Sovereign AI team to help build up the UK's AI capabilities and seize opportunities. This may include guaranteeing companies access to data and energy
• creating a National Data Library to safely and securely unlock the value of public data and support AI development – the government will explore identifying 5 high-impact public data sets which will be made available to researchers and innovators while taking into account ethical, privacy and safety issues
• a dedicated AI Energy Council to help understand energy demands relating to AI and develop clean energy solutions.

The Plan and response also cover:

• AI safety issues and trusted AI development through regulation, safety and assurance
• training and education and broadening the talent pool including by establishing a headhunting unit
• requiring regulators to prioritise using AI
• access to data for science and research
• public and private sector collaborations
• creating a media asset training dataset which can be licensed internationally and at scale subject to agreement from stakeholders
• reforming the UK text and data mining regime to make it at least as competitive as the EU's as set out in the AI Copyright Consultation published in December 2024 (see below)
• using the Regulatory Innovation Office to help identify priority sectors and appointing a National Champion to help drive AI adoption
• adopting a flexible 'scan, pilot, scale' approach to adoption of AI in government and public services with AI Champions appointed in sectors highlighted in the Industrial Strategy, and
• addressing private sector user adoption barriers.

What does this mean for you?

The Plan and response have been largely well received by the AI industry which is unsurprising given the emphasis placed on facilitating and promoting AI uptake. 

The government has said it will continue to develop its policy response to the Action Plan as part of the broader work ahead of the Spring 2025 Spending Review. It will further set out its wider approach to AI in the Industrial Strategy's Digital and Technologies Sector Plan which will be driven by the newly created AI Opportunities Unit in DSIT. Matt Clifford has been appointed AI Opportunities Adviser to the Prime Minister and work will now begin on the recommendations made in the Plan with deliverables starting from Spring 2025 and going all the way to 2030. 

What this really means is that much of the detail as to how the 50 recommendations will be implemented will follow over the course of the year and not before Spring. 

More to come

The Action Plan does not tackle the subject of potential AI legislation in detail although it does cover the need for copyright reform and for a suitable regulatory and governance framework for AI. 

Work has already begun on the reforming the copyright regime. On 17 December 2024, the UK government published a consultation on copyright and AI. This sets out a proposal for the introduction of a text and data mining (TDM) exception similar to that under Article 4 of the EU Copyright Directive (itself a controversial provision). The consultation also proposes reforming protection of computer-generated works with the government favouring the removal of the protection provided to them under s9(3) of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. In addition, the consultation covers:

• measures that would require increased transparency from AI developers to enhance trust between them and rights holders
• how existing tools that enable rights holders to reserve their rights might be improved
• how the government should support licensing including collective licensing
• labelling of AI outputs.

This remains a contentious issue with many creative groups already pushing back on the proposals.

The government has also said it will publish AI legislation "shortly", having announced its intention to do so in the July 2024 King's Speech, although it now appears a consultation will not be published until the Spring.  It's unclear what exactly this will cover. In the King's Speech, it was said it would help ensure the safe development and use of AI models, and it looks set to focus on frontier AI, but it may also cover copyright, access to data and public sector use of AI. Certainly, there is much more to come from the government on AI this year.