UK announces over £100m for AI regulators and research

The UK government announced more than £100 million in AI-related funding, split across three strands. £10 million was earmarked to help sector regulators — including Ofcom and the Competition and Markets Authority — build technical expertise in AI, with key regulators asked to publish plans by the end of April 2024 setting out AI-related risks in their sectors and their current capacity to address them. A further £90 million was allocated to nine new research hubs covering areas such as healthcare, chemistry and mathematics, and £9 million went to a new UK–US research partnership on responsible AI, delivered through the government’s International Science Partnerships Fund.

The announcement followed the government’s earlier response to its AI Regulation White Paper consultation, which had set out a “pro-innovation” approach favouring sector-specific regulator guidance over a single cross-cutting AI law — a position that put the UK at odds with the European Union’s more centralised AI Act, then moving through its own final stages.

The funding built on momentum from the November 2023 AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park, where the UK had separately committed £100 million to establish the AI Safety Institute (later renamed the UK AI Security Institute), a body focused on evaluating frontier models rather than on sector regulators’ day-to-day capacity. Together the two commitments reflected the UK’s twin-track approach: a national body assessing the most capable models, and existing regulators — rather than a new AI-specific regulator — handling AI’s use within their existing remits.