OpenAI and Anthropic tell UK lawmakers that AI companies should be regulated by legislation

At a hearing of the UK Parliament's Business, Innovation, Science and Trade Committee, representatives from OpenAI and Anthropic said voluntary commitments are no longer sufficient to ensure safety and supported a binding regulatory framework, while Google DeepMind and Meta did not endorse new legislation. Anthropic's Europe head Liam Booth-Smith said rules should be binding; OpenAI vice president Tom Duff Gordon supported a statutory framework and international conventions, arguing that parts such as incident reporting should be mandatory. Henry de Zoete, head of the UK AI Safety Institute (AISI), acknowledged that the institute can only test models that companies voluntarily submit and cannot prevent companies from releasing models it deems dangerous, and Cat Little, Permanent Secretary of the Cabinet Office, said the current system is indeed voluntary. On the same day, MI5 Director General Ken McCallum warned in his annual threat briefing that AI could change the risk landscape for biological weapons.