Britain to get first look at new AI systems after White House U-turn

The White House has reinstated the UK’s access to the latest AI models for safety testing after lobbying from ministers, The Telegraph can reveal.

The UK’s AI Security Institute (AISI) will now be able to access the latest models from US tech companies before they are released, allowing British officials to run safety tests.

Last month, the White House asked Anthropic, OpenAI and other major AI companies to stop sharing their models with AISI, in a major blow to Andy Burnham’s attempt to become a world leader in AI regulation.

After the order from Donald Trump’s Office of the National Cyber Director, Anthropic restricted UK officials from reviewing its new Claude Mythos 5.1 model.

The Telegraph understands that decision has been reversed after lobbying from Kanishka Narayan, the AI minister, and AISI will be given pre-release access to models from Anthropic, Google Deepmind and OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT.

Mr Burnham’s push for international regulation of AI models comes despite Mr Trump’s warning that “globalist” organisations should not interfere with the development of models by American companies.

Mr Trump told the United Nations General Assembly last month that he wanted to “encourage” AI, “not rein it in”.

He said: “Americans have never been a nation that retreats from a frontier or shrinks from a challenge, no matter how great or how daunting that challenge may be.”

Raft of new measures

However, in a speech on Monday, Mr Narayan will warn that tech companies cannot be left to regulate themselves, and will announce a series of new measures to reduce the risk of AI to the Government, companies and the public.

He will announce changes to Labour’s Cyber Security and Resilience Bill, which will strengthen the requirement for companies working on critical national infrastructure projects to report to the Government any security breaches using AI.

Ministers are also planning to increase the Government’s use of frontier AI – the most recent and advanced models – to protect Whitehall departments from cyber attacks.