AI Safety

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Wednesday 10th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is such a pleasure to take part in this critical debate. I start by acknowledging the Government’s commitment to rolling out AI in many areas and making the UK an adoption nation. They must also respond to the public demand for regulation in this area, however, and recognise that the two are interlinked. Research from the Ada Lovelace Institute and the Alan Turing Institute found that 72% of the public would feel more comfortable with AI if it was properly regulated.

There are clear potentials from AI, but there are also clear harms. We have already heard about chatbots in this debate, and I would add to that discussion the issues related to AI slop—often hate-filled slop produced by influencers who are profiting heavily from it while polluting the internet. I would also add that Sora 2, which is well known to many schoolkids if not to those of us in the Chamber, has recently been shown to produce videos of school shootings, for example, for people purporting to be 13 years old—who were, of course, adults pretending to be that age. Snapchat execs have apparently been willing to go ahead with so-called beautification lenses, despite concerns relating to body image.

There are significant harms, and I seek clarification on a number of questions. Will the curriculum review cover AI? Will teachers be supported in delivering that? Will there be a ban on nudified adult women images? When is the violence against women and girls strategy coming out—very soon, I hope? What is the position of AI chatbots, and are they covered by the Online Safety Act 2023? There seems to be a lot of confusion around that, at a time when we cannot have confusion. What is the timeline for the Secretary of State to look into this issue, given how important it is? Can the Minister push Ofcom to speedily publish the parameters for its welcome investigation into illegal online hate and terror material, and is that going to cover AI bots and slop? Surely it needs to.

We need Ministers to commit to an AI Bill. Can the Minister provide a timeline for that? Will that much-needed Bill include mandatory ex-ante evaluations for frontier AI models and transparency from companies on safety issues? I have asked parliamentary questions about this issue, but I am afraid that I do not completely agree with the Government that AI companies are conforming with international agreements. Surely we need more on that.

Are we going to have more scrutiny of AI use in government? Again—taking up the question that was asked earlier—I have asked PQs on BSL. Apparently, there is no knowledge of the cross-Government procurement of AI BSL, but there does seem to be discrete use of it by governmental bodies. Surely that needs to be looked at more. Surely we also need to act with the EU, with its commitment to human-centric, trustworthy AI, because ultimately, we have strength in numbers.