Comment on the Government’s Response to the AI White Paper Consultation

On February 6, the Government published its response to the AI Regulation White Paper consultation. In response, our Director of Policy Research, Konrad Shek said:

“We welcome the Government’s steadfast commitment to take a pro-innovation approach to AI regulation that supports growth and innovation and agree with the principles-based approach which was originally proposed by the White paper. It will be important, going forward, that regulators can coordinate effectively and have the right resources to ensure regulatory cohesion and identify gaps.

We are also pleased about the Government acknowledgement of the proactive steps that regulators, such as the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), were taking proactive to address AI and implement the principles within their remits.

We think that it was also important that the report recognised the copyright concerns of creative industries and media organisations. To that end, we welcome DCMS’ commitment to work closely with publishers, and other creative businesses to understand the impact of AI on these sectors, with a view to mitigating risks and capitalising on opportunities.

At the Advertising Association, we recognise AI’s potentially transformative productivity and creativity gains for the industry. Last year, the Advertising Association formed an AI Taskforce to help shape the industry’s response to AI and to ensure it is used transparently and ethically. Like the House of Lord inquiry into Large Language Models, we will also study this Government response to the White paper in detail to understand its implications.

We look forward to engaging with the Government to help achieve the aim of positioning the UK advertising industry as a world-leading, but responsible, developer and user of AI.”