Ministers have accepted $1m (£728,000) from Meta, the US tech and social media company, to build AI systems for defence, national security and transport, sparking warnings about the UK government’s “alarmingly close relationship with Trump-supporting US tech giants”.
The money from Mark Zuckerberg’s company will be used to pay experts to “develop cutting-edge AI solutions … to support national security and defence teams”, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) announced on Tuesday.
The money will pay for four British AI experts, coordinated by the government-funded Alan Turing Institute, to “play a pivotal role in rewiring our healthcare, police, transport systems and more”, said Ian Murray, the minister for data and digital government.
The move comes after Meta executives had 50 meetings with ministers in the last two years for which data was available, one of the highest levels of direct access of any technology company, a Guardian investigation found.
The government is consulting on a ban on social media use by under-16s, which would have a major effect on Meta’s Instagram platform. Meta said the money had been allocated to the Alan Turing Institute before any ban was floated.
Announcing the $1m deal, Meta said it was “proud to help bring top British AI talent into government, fast-tracking the transformation of public services”.
DSIT said: “People across the UK could benefit from faster, safer and more reliable public services as leading British AI specialists join government to modernise critical systems used every day – from public safety to transport maintenance.”
But the tech justice campaign group Foxglove asked: “What’s Meta getting for its million dollars?” It added: “When it comes to big tech, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.”
“This is yet more evidence of the UK government’s alarmingly close relationship with Trump-supporting US tech giants,” said Donald Campbell, Foxglove’s advocacy director. “It’s deeply worrying that ministers are still naive enough to swallow this kind of lobbying from a handful of Silicon Valley plutocrats – who have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt they do not have the British public’s best interests at heart.”
Daisy Greenwell, a co-founder of the Smartphone Free Childhood campaign, said the deal “highlights an uncomfortable reality: tech giants spend vast sums to gain access and influence in policymaking”.
She added: “That makes it even more important that decisions about children and online safety are shaped by independent evidence and the public interest, not by the companies whose products are under scrutiny.”
The government also announced a new partnership with the San Francisco AI company Anthropic, which will build and pilot a dedicated assistant tool for public services on gov.uk, starting with a model that will give jobseekers career advice “and help to lock down a job”. Anthropic said the project implementation work was “pro bono”.
DSIT said the technology was “part of a cutting-edge plan to use AI agents for national government services, with a pilot expected to begin later this year”. In October, Anthropic announced that the former prime minister Rishi Sunak was taking an advisory role at the $350bn startup. The former Downing Street chief of staff Liam Booth-Smith is a policy and communications adviser to Anthropic.
The deals come as ministers wrestle with policy decisions that directly affect Meta and Anthropic. As well as launching a consultation last week on banning social media use for under-16s, they are also due to set out changes to how creatives’ copyrighted works are protected from being mined to build AI models, such as those made by Anthropic.
Beeban Kidron, a cross-bench peer who campaigns on child protection and copyright, said: “This government is walking into dependence on Silicon Valley, is undermining the chance to build a UK AI sector, and above all is busy giving away some of the most precious datasets in the world to Silicon Valley, who could well afford to pay.”
The Meta-funded AI experts will be tasked with using AI to develop models that analyse images and videos, enabling councils to prioritise transport infrastructure repairs more effectively. They will also “develop cutting-edge AI solutions which run offline or within secured networks to support national security and defence teams to make vital decisions while safeguarding sensitive data”, the government said.
