The United Kingdom is rapidly embedding artificial intelligence tools across public administration, with ambitions of achieving better outcomes at lower cost and at scale. Judges are now openly using artificial intelligence tools and large-scale deployments are increasing, tracked through a government-led transparency register that lists more than one hundred examples. These include systems to detect anomalous values in value added tax returns, chatbots used by the department of work and pensions and the driver and vehicle licensing agency to triage citizen contacts, and an artificial intelligence based model in the universal credit system to assess risk and prevent welfare fraud.
Following Brexit, the United Kingdom sits outside the scope of the european union artificial intelligence act and initially adopted a self-described pro-innovation, wait-and-see strategy for governmental artificial intelligence use, relying on existing administrative law, procurement rules, data protection law, and equality legislation. In practice, very few disputes involving artificial intelligence systems have resulted in full judicial decisions, and enforcement mechanisms appear weak, despite a proliferation of soft law guidance from public bodies. The resulting legal uncertainty exposes individuals to heightened risks from both individual and systemic administrative failures and creates a fragmented regulatory landscape, with different regulators developing overlapping and potentially inconsistent approaches and precedents.
As recognition of these risks grows, policymakers are pivoting toward a more deliberate regulatory strategy focused on a distinct United Kingdom framework for artificial intelligence in administrative action. The law commission, in its fourteenth programme of law reform, has described the development of a coherent legal framework for automated decision making as the most significant current challenge in public law and has committed to exploring legislative options, from an overarching statute to sector-specific reforms. The shift from a hands-off posture to a serious law reform initiative has occurred in just over a year, influenced by a change in government and by the rapid acceleration of artificial intelligence use in administration. The law commission’s multi-year, consultative process will proceed while courts and public bodies continue to wrestle with applying a patchwork of existing legal frameworks to technologies that strain traditional assumptions, amid rising political risk highlighted by high-profile failures of automated systems abroad and increasing cross-jurisdictional dialogue, particularly between United States and United Kingdom administrative law communities.
