The U.K. government on Wednesday published recommendations for the artificial intelligence industry, outlining an all-encompassing approach for regulating the technology at a time when it has reached frenzied levels of hype.
In a white paper to be put forward to Parliament, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) will outline five principles it wants companies to follow. They are: safety, security and robustness; transparency and explainability; fairness; accountability and governance; and contestability and redress.
related investing news
15 hours ago
Rather than establishing new regulations, the government is calling on regulators to apply existing regulations and inform companies about their obligations under the white paper.
It has tasked the Health and Safety Executive, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and the Competition and Markets Authority with coming up with “tailored, context-specific approaches that suit the way AI is actually being used in their sectors.”
“Over the next twelve months, regulators will issue practical guidance to organisations, as well as other tools and resources like risk assessment templates, to set out how to implement these principles in their sectors,” the government said.
“When parliamentary time allows, legislation could be introduced to ensure regulators consider the principles consistently.”
Maya Pindeus, CEO and co-founder of AI startup Humanising Autonomy, said the government’s move marked a “first step” toward regulating AI.
“There does need to be a bit of a stronger narrative,” she said. “I hope to see that. This is kind of planting the seeds for this.”
However, she added, “Regulating technology as technology is incredibly difficult. You want it to advance; you don’t want to hinder any advancements when it impacts us in certain ways.”
The arrival of the recommendations is timely. ChatGPT, the popular AI chatbot developed by the Microsoft-backed company OpenAI, has driven a wave of demand for the technology, and people are using the tool for everything from penning school essays to drafting legal opinions.
ChatGPT has already become one of the fastest-growing consumer applications of all time, attracting 100 million monthly active users as of February. But experts have raised concerns about the negative implications of the technology, including the potential for plagiarism and discrimination against women and ethnic minorities.
AI ethicists are worried about biases in the data that trains AI models. Algorithms have been shown to have a tendency of being skewed in favor men — especially white men — putting women and minorities at a disadvantage.
Fears have also been raised about the possibility of jobs being lost to automation. On Tuesday, Goldman Sachs warned that as many as 300 million jobs could be at risk of being wiped out by generative AI products.
The government wants companies that incorporate AI into their businesses to ensure they provide an ample level of transparency about how their algorithms are developed and used. Organizations “should be able to communicate when and how it is used and explain a system’s decision-making process in an appropriate level of detail that matches the risks posed by the use of AI,” the DSIT said.
Companies should also offer users a way to contest rulings taken by AI-based tools, the DSIT said. User-generated platforms like Facebook, TikTok and YouTube often use automated systems to remove content flagged up as being against their guidelines.
AI, which is believed to contribute £3.7 billion ($4.6 billion) to the U.K. economy each year, should also “be used in a way which complies with the UK’s existing laws, for example the Equality Act 2010 or UK GDPR, and must not discriminate against individuals or create unfair commercial outcomes,” the DSIT added.
On Monday, Secretary of State Michelle Donelan visited the offices of AI startup DeepMind in London, a government spokesperson said.
“Artificial intelligence is no longer the stuff of science fiction, and the pace of AI development is staggering, so we need to have rules to make sure it is developed safely,” Donelan said in a statement Wednesday.
“Our new approach is based on strong principles so that people can trust businesses to unleash this technology of tomorrow.”
Lila Ibrahim, chief operating officer of DeepMind and a member of the U.K.’s AI Council, said AI is a “transformational technology,” but that it “can only reach its full potential if it is trusted, which requires public and private partnership in the spirit of pioneering responsibly.”
“The UK’s proposed context-driven approach will help regulation keep pace with the development of AI, support innovation and mitigate future risks,” Ibrahim said.
Not everyone is convinced by the U.K. government’s approach to regulating AI. John Buyers, head of AI at the law firm Osborne Clarke, said the move to delegate responsibility for supervising the technology among regulators risks creating a “complicated regulatory patchwork full of holes.”
“The risk with the current approach is that an problematic AI system will need to present itself in the right format to trigger a regulator’s jurisdiction, and moreover the regulator in question will need to have the right enforcement powers in place to take decisive and effective action to remedy the harm caused and generate a sufficient deterrent effect to incentivise compliance in the industry,” Buyers told CNBC via email.
By contrast, the EU has proposed a “top down regulatory framework” when it comes to AI, he added.
TikTok’s grip on the short-form video market is tightening, and the world’s biggest tech platforms are racing to catch up.
Since launching globally in 2016, ByteDance-owned TikTok has amassed over 1.12 billion monthly active users worldwide, according to Backlinko. American users spend an average of 108 minutes per day on the app, according to Apptoptia.
TikTok’s success has reshaped the social media landscape, forcing competitors like Meta and Google to pivot their strategies around short-form video. But so far, experts say that none have matched TikTok’s algorithmic precision.
“It is the center of the internet for young people,” said Jasmine Enberg, vice president and principal analyst at Emarketer. “It’s where they go for entertainment, news, trends, even shopping. TikTok sets the tone for everyone else.”
Platforms like Meta‘s Instagram Reels and Google’s YouTube Shorts have expanded aggressively, launching new features, creator tools and even considering separate apps just to compete. Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, traditionally a professional networking site, is the latest to experiment with TikTok-style feeds. But with TikTok continuing to evolve, adding features like e-commerce integrations and longer videos, the question remains whether rivals can keep up.
“I’m scrolling every single day. I doom scroll all the time,” said TikTok content creator Alyssa McKay.
But there may a dark side to this growth.
As short-form content consumption soars, experts warn about shrinking attention spans and rising mental-health concerns, particularly among younger users. Researchers like Dr. Yann Poncin, associate professor at the Child Study Center at Yale University, point to disrupted sleep patterns and increased anxiety levels tied to endless scrolling habits.
“Infinite scrolling and short-form video are designed to capture your attention in short bursts,” Dr. Poncin said. “In the past, entertainment was about taking you on a journey through a show or story. Now, it’s about locking you in for just a few seconds, just enough to feed you the next thing the algorithm knows you’ll like.”
Despite sky-high engagement, monetizing short videos remains an uphill battle. Unlike long-form YouTube content, where ads can be inserted throughout, short clips offer limited space for advertisers. Creators, too, are feeling the squeeze.
“It’s never been easier to go viral,” said Enberg. “But it’s never been harder to turn that virality into a sustainable business.”
Last year, TikTok generated an estimated $23.6 billion in ad revenues, according to Oberlo, but even with this growth, many creators still make just a few dollars per million views. YouTube Shorts pays roughly four cents per 1,000 views, which is less than its long-form counterpart. Meanwhile, Instagram has leaned into brand partnerships and emerging tools like “Trial Reels,” which allow creators to experiment with content by initially sharing videos only with non-followers, giving them a low-risk way to test new formats or ideas before deciding whether to share with their full audience. But Meta told CNBC that monetizing Reels remains a work in progress.
While lawmakers scrutinize TikTok’s Chinese ownership and explore potential bans, competitors see a window of opportunity. Meta and YouTube are poised to capture up to 50% of reallocated ad dollars if TikTok faces restrictions in the U.S., according to eMarketer.
Watch the video to understand how TikTok’s rise sparked a short form video race.
The X logo appears on a phone, and the xAI logo is displayed on a laptop in Krakow, Poland, on April 1, 2025. (Photo by Klaudia Radecka/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Elon Musk‘s xAI Holdings is in discussions with investors to raise about $20 billion, Bloomberg News reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The funding would value the company at over $120 billion, according to the report.
Musk was looking to assign “proper value” to xAI, sources told CNBC’s David Faber earlier this month. The remarks were made during a call with xAI investors, sources familiar with the matter told Faber. The Tesla CEO at that time didn’t explicitly mention any upcoming funding round, but the sources suggested xAI was preparing for a substantial capital raise in the near future.
The funding amount could be more than $20 billion as the exact figure had not been decided, the Bloomberg report added.
Artificial intelligence startup xAI didn’t immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment outside of U.S. business hours.
The AI firm last month acquired X in an all-stock deal that valued xAI at $80 billion and the social media platform at $33 billion.
“xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent,” Musk said on X, announcing the deal. “This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach.”
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai during the Google I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California, on May 10, 2023.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Alphabet‘s stock gained 3% Friday after signaling strong growth in its search and advertising businesses amid a competitive artificial intelligence environment and uncertain macro backdrop.
“GOOGL‘s pace of GenAI product roll-out is accelerating with multiple encouraging signals,” wrote Morgan Stanley‘s Brian Nowak. “Macro uncertainty still exists but we remain [overweight] given GOOGL’s still strong relative position and improving pace of GenAI enabled product roll-out.”
The search giant posted earnings of $2.81 per share on $90.23 billion in revenues. That topped the $89.12 billion in sales and $2.01 in EPS expected by LSEG analysts. Revenues grew 12% year-over-year and ahead of the 10% anticipated by Wall Street.
Net income rose 46% to $34.54 billion, or $2.81 per share. That’s up from $23.66 billion, or $1.89 per share, in the year-ago period. Alphabet said the figure included $8 billion in unrealized gains on its nonmarketable equity securities connected to its investment in a private company.
Adjusted earnings, excluding that gain, were $2.27 per share, according to LSEG, and topped analyst expectations.
Read more CNBC tech news
Alphabet shares have pulled back about 16% this year as it battles volatility spurred by mounting trade war fears and worries that President Donald Trump‘s tariffs could crush the global economy. That would make it more difficult for Alphabet to potentially acquire infrastructure for data centers powering AI models as it faces off against competitors such as OpenAI and Anthropic to develop largely language models.
During Thursday’s call with investors, Alphabet suggested that it’s too soon to tally the total impact of tariffs. However, Google’s business chief Philipp Schindler said that ending the de minimis trade exemption in May, which created a loophole benefitting many Chinese e-commerce retailers, could create a “slight headwind” for the company’s ads business, specifically in the Asia-Pacific region. The loophole allows shipments under $800 to come into the U.S. duty-free.
Despite this backdrop, Alphabet showed steady growth in its advertising and search business, reporting $66.89 billion in revenues for its advertising unit. That reflected 8.5% growth from the year-ago period. The company reported $8.93 billion in advertising revenue for its YouTube business, shy of an $8.97 billion estimate from StreetAccount.
Alphabet’s “Search and other” unit rose 9.8% to $50.7 billion, up from $46.16 billion last year. The company said that its AI Overviews tool used in its Google search results page has accumulated 1.5 billion monthly users from a billion in October.
Bank of America analyst Justin Post said that Wall Street is underestimating the upside potential and “monetization ramp” from this tool and cloud demand fueled by AI.
“The strong 1Q search performance, along with constructive comments on Gemini [large language model] performance and [AI Overviews] adoption could help alleviate some investor concerns on AI competition,” Post wrote in a note.