The SEC Newgate AI Weekly

As we build towards the upcoming UK General Election, there are several interesting developments in the use of AI this week:

The Labour Manifesto carries a number of promises relating to AI, with a National Data Library to support research and public services, scrapping short funding cycles for key R&D institutions in favour of ten-year-budgets and creating a new Regulatory Innovation Office to ensure regulation keeps pace with the development of AI.

Candidates are also using AI to meet with voters when they can’t be there in person. Independent candidate for Brighton, Steve Endacott has created ‘AI Steve’ to speak to voters without his involvement. He has gone as far to suggest that it is AI Steve and not himself running – putting ‘AI Steve’ as the nomination on the ballot paper. It remains to be seen how this will be received by voters…

Apple have used their latest keynote to announce a new partnership with OpenAI to integrate their AI into Apple’s operating system. This is a groundbreaking announcement and is seen as a big step forward for Apple who many were waiting for them to progress their AI capabilities. The news wasn’t so well received by Elon Musk, who used his platform on X to threaten to ban Apple devices from his companies. You can read more about it in my colleague Matt Redley's blog.

Meta have announced a new AI Assistant for WhatsApp, helping businesses customers via chat. This will be rolled out in India and Singapore before other markets but will revolutionise how businesses connect with customers.

Finally, the new AI Safety Bill in California has caused uproar amongst tech giants, who claim it will restrict progress. The bill seeks to regulate development of AI to ensure they do not develop models with ‘hazardous capability’.