The King’s Speech details the government’s priorities for the months ahead by indicating which Bills will be introduced and carried forward into the new term.

While the speech spoke to pressing policy issues including fiscal, educational, and environmental concerns, it was short on those which were expected to be raised which concerned the sector, including an AI Bill.

Within the speech, King Charles did not mention a new data bill after the Data Protection and Digital Information (DPDI) Bill was dropped, however post-speech, it was announced that a new Digital Information and Smart Data Bill would be introduced, holding similar provisions to the Conservative’s DPDI Bill.

The only reference the speech made to AI was through the Employment Rights Bill, part of which will “seek to establish the appropriate legislation to place requirements on those working to develop the most powerful artificial intelligence models”.

It is likely that this will primarily focus on issues that are public facing, such as the proliferation of illicit deepfakes, or the issues with AI-related bias in recruitment processes, rather than business-related concerns.

It was anticipated that there would be a standalone AI Bill (due to industry-wide talks), however the only indication of its regulation would be via the Employment Right Bill.

Lord Holmes, the Tory peer who previously introduced an Artificial Intelligence (Regulation) Private Members’ Bill, shared thoughts on LinkedIn shortly after the King’s Speech.

He expressed concern over the “significant gaps in the legal framework for governing AI and many areas in which low risk models are doing harm such as [large language models] ingesting creative content without the consent of rightsholders”.

In the same post, he expressed that he was expecting a full AI Bill, based on the rumours.

In light of this, the PPA will continue to work with stakeholders to ensure that the issues faced by the specialist publishing sector, where AI developers are using copyrighted content to train models, is effectively addressed and changes surrounding transparency can be implemented.

If you have any questions, or concerns, please contact our Head of Policy and Public Affairs, Eilidh.wilson@ppa.co.uk