Category: Tech

During his recent visit to Brussels, Microsoft chief Brad Smith committed his company to defending European interests from ‘geopolitical volatility’, including the impact of potential US administration interventions.

Suggesting that Microsoft is ‘critically dependent on sustaining the trust of customers, countries, and government across Europe’, anyone leaving his session with EU leaders should have reasonably felt buoyed up by his words; but might also have sensibly awaited evidence of the commitments being applied in practice before relying upon them.

If so, the news that the International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor and his staff have had their Microsoft email and services cancelled in direct response to US government sanctions might come as an unwelcome reality check.

According to media reports, ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan had his Microsoft email and other services suspended after the US applied sanctions in February to all ICC staff in response to their investigations into key Israeli politicians.

The circumstances of the situation that gave rise to those sanctions are outside the scope of this article, and largely irrelevant to the problems these service suspensions indicate, however.

Regardless of the ‘why’, what the service suspensions demonstrate is that Microsoft has the means (and when it comes down to it also possess the will) to do the US government’s bidding and disrupt services to any party deemed to be unacceptable.

This is almost exactly contrary to the assurances Brad Smith so very recently gave.

The disconnection of prosecutor Khan is a mouse-click heard around the world, and will undoubtedly give anyone using or currently considering the adoption of Microsoft cloud technologies pause for thought.

By disconnecting the ICC staff in this way, Microsoft has done themselves some serious damage, and how much may take some time yet to become clear.

Immediately after the disconnection became public, the Dutch government and public bodies are reported to have accelerated their examination of non-Microsoft and EU-located alternative services.

Meanwhile, several suppliers have indicated an uptick in requests for backup of key data to protect against possible Microsoft disconnections.

Press coverage in Germany suggests these concerns are rippling out to them also, whilst the Nordics and France have long made clear that they see a future that is distinctly less Azure in colour.

The likelihood or otherwise of further disconnections is unclear, and for most users it should be considered very unlikely that Microsoft will start switching off services for no good reason.

With 25% of Microsoft’s global revenues coming from European customers, it is unlikely to act rashly to damage that market, and can generally be counted on to be sensible and not commit commercial suicide – so most customers should not be worried.

Nonetheless much of the damage to the confidence of public sector bodies might well have already been done.

Governments like to be in control of their own destiny and that extends to digital services and data.

When a key supplier they have relied upon for many years shows themselves to be subject to the whims and foibles of a foreign government – friendly or otherwise – most public sector buyers intuitively know it’s time to find an alternative provider “just-in-case”. Having a plan B option is just common sense.

The big problem for Microsoft is that in the IT sector “just-in-case” or plan B options, often become strategic plan A directions of travel. And a trickle of departures can quite soon become a flood. Governments are herd animals – when one turns they all tend to follow.

I’m not by any measure suggesting we are going to see an overnight exodus. Even if that was technically feasible (which it isn’t in most cases), these organisations are a bit concerned, not panicked.

However, these previously affirmed Microsoft user groups are now openly talking about the need for alternatives to the Redmond cloud provider, and that should have Microsoft worried.

Concerns that US hyperscalers might be subjected to pressure from US authorities to disclose information have existed for some time but have been broadly assuaged by repeated promises and commitments from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft that they would resist such requests and protect their customers.

When it has come to the acid test, however, many clearly feel that Microsoft has failed, and that instead of protecting the ICC as a key pillar of the global legal community, instead acted as an instrument of US policy.

To restore his own email access, prosecutor Khan reportedly turned to Proton Mail, the Swiss end-to-end encrypted mail service beloved of whistleblowers and other digital refugees.

Proton Mail operate under its own constraints and obligations to disclose information to the Swiss government on demand, but this is limited to IP address info, rather than email payloads, which it is generally accepted they cannot access.

In doing so it’s likely that Mr Khan has had to forgo some user functionality and ease of use – but he may feel that’s a small price to pay to protect his office and role from US government influence.

That might be a choice others have to make in the months and years to come, since regardless of their choice of cloud provider, the lesson here is that we cannot always trust them to rigorously and strongly protect our data or our services, despite what they may say, or how often they do so.

In this case, Microsoft’s actions sadly speak a lot louder than Mr Smith’s words.

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Essex Police has not properly considered the potentially discriminatory impacts of its live facial recognition (LFR) use, according to documents obtained by Big Brother Watch and shared with Computer Weekly.

While the force claims in an equality impact assessment (EIA) that “Essex Police has carefully considered issues regarding bias and algorithmic injustice”, privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch said the document – obtained under Freedom of Information (FoI) rules – shows it has likely failed to fulfil its public sector equality duty (PSED) to consider how its policies and practices could be discriminatory.

The campaigners highlighted how the force is relying on false comparisons to other algorithms and “parroting misleading claims” from the supplier about the LFR system’s lack of bias.

For example, Essex Police said that when deploying LFR, it will set the system threshold “at 0.6 or above, as this is the level whereby equitability of the rate of false positive identification across all demographics is achieved”.

However, this figure is based on the National Physical Laboratory’s (NPL) testing of NEC’s Neoface V4 LFR algorithm deployed by the Metropolitan Police and South Wales Police, which Essex Police does not use.

Instead, Essex Police has opted to use an algorithm developed by Israeli biometrics firm Corsight, whose chief privacy officer, Tony Porter, was formerly the UK’s surveillance camera commissioner until January 2021.

Highlighting testing of the Corsight_003 algorithm conducted in June 2022 by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the EIA also claims it has “a bias differential FMR [False Match Rate] of 0.0006 overall, the lowest of any tested within NIST at the time of writing, according to the supplier”.

However, looking at the NIST website, where all of the testing data is publicly shared, there is no information to support the figure cited by Corsight, or its claim to essentially have the least biased algorithm available.

A separate FoI response to Big Brother Watch confirmed that, as of 16 January 2025, Essex Police had not conducted any “formal or detailed” testing of the system itself, or otherwise commissioned a third party to do so.

Essex Police’s lax approach to assessing the dangers of a controversial and dangerous new form of surveillance has put the rights of thousands at risk Jake Hurfurt, Big Brother Watch

“Looking at Essex Police’s EIA, we are concerned about the force’s compliance with its duties under equality law, as the reliance on shaky evidence seriously undermines the force’s claims about how the public will be protected against algorithmic bias,” said Jake Hurfurt, head of research and investigations at Big Brother Watch.

“Essex Police’s lax approach to assessing the dangers of a controversial and dangerous new form of surveillance has put the rights of thousands at risk. This slapdash scrutiny of their intrusive facial recognition system sets a worrying precedent.

“Facial recognition is notorious for misidentifying women and people of colour, and Essex Police’s willingness to deploy the technology without testing it themselves raises serious questions about the force’s compliance with equalities law. Essex Police should immediately stop their use of facial recognition surveillance.”

The need for UK police forces deploying facial recognition to consider how their use of the technology could be discriminatory was highlighted by a legal challenge brought against South Wales Police by Cardiff resident Ed Bridges.

In August 2020, the UK Court of Appeal ruled that the use of LFR by the force was unlawful because the privacy violations it entailed were “not in accordance” with legally permissible restrictions on Bridges’ Article 8 privacy rights; it did not conduct an appropriate data protection impact assessment (DPIA); and it did not comply with its PSED to consider how its policies and practices could be discriminatory.

The judgment specifically found that the PSED is a “duty of process and not outcome”, and requires public bodies to take reasonable steps “to make enquiries about what may not yet be known to a public authority about the potential impact of a proposed decision or policy on people with the relevant characteristics, in particular for present purposes race and sex”.

Big Brother Watch said equality assessments must rely on “sufficient quality evidence” to back up the claims being made and ultimately satisfy the PSED, but that the documents obtained do not demonstrate the force has had “due regard” for equalities.

Academic Karen Yeung, an interdisciplinary professor at Birmingham Law School and School of Computer Science, told Computer Weekly that, in her view, the EIA is “clearly inadequate”.

She also criticised the document for being “incoherent”, failing to look at the systemic equalities impacts of the technology, and relying exclusively on testing of entirely different software algorithms used by other police forces trained on different populations: “This does not, in my view, fulfil the requirements of the public sector equality duty. It is a document produced from a cut-and-paste exercise from the largely irrelevant material produced by others.”

Essex Police responds

Computer Weekly contacted Essex Police about every aspect of the story.

“We take our responsibility to meet our public sector equality duty very seriously, and there is a contractual requirement on our LFR partner to ensure sufficient testing has taken place to ensure the software meets the specification and performance outlined in the tender process,” said a spokesperson.

“There have been more than 50 deployments of our LFR vans, scanning 1.7 million faces, which have led to more than 200 positive alerts, and nearly 70 arrests.

“To date, there has been one false positive, which, when reviewed, was established to be as a result of a low-quality photo uploaded onto the watchlist and not the result of bias issues with the technology. This did not lead to an arrest or any other unlawful action because of the procedures in place to verify all alerts. This issue has been resolved to ensure it does not occur again.”

The spokesperson added that the force is also committed to carrying out further assessment of the software and algorithms, with the evaluation of deployments and results being subject to an independent academic review.

“As part of this, we have carried out, and continue to do so, testing and evaluation activity in conjunction with the University of Cambridge. The NPL have recently agreed to carry out further independent testing, which will take place over the summer. The company have also achieved an ISO 42001 certification,” said the spokesperson. “We are also liaising with other technical specialists regarding further testing and evaluation activity.”

However, the force did not comment on why it was relying on the testing of a completely different algorithm in its EIA, or why it had not conducted or otherwise commissioned its own testing before operationally deploying the technology in the field.

Computer Weekly followed up Essex Police for clarification on when the testing with Cambridge began, as this is not mentioned in the EIA, but received no response by time of publication.

‘Misleading’ testing claims

Although Essex Police and Corsight claim the facial recognition algorithm in use has “a bias differential FMR of 0.0006 overall, the lowest of any tested within NIST at the time of writing”, there is no publicly available data on NIST’s website to support this claim.

Drilling down into the demographic split of false positive rates shows, for example, that there is a factor of 100 more false positives in West African women than for Eastern European men.

While this is an improvement on the previous two algorithms submitted for testing by Corsight, other publicly available data held by NIST undermines Essex Police’s claim in the EIA that the “algorithm is identified by NIST as having the lowest bias variance between demographics”.

Looking at another metric held by NIST – FMR Max/Min, which refers to the ratio between demographic groups that give the most and least false positives – it essentially represents how inequitable the error rates are across different age groups, sexes and ethnicities.

In this instance, smaller values represent better performance, with the ratio being an estimate of how many times more false positives can be expected in one group over another.

According to the NIST webpage for “demographic effects” in facial recognition algorithms, the Corsight algorithm has an FMR Max/Min of 113(22), meaning there are at least 21 algorithms that display less bias. For comparison, the least biased algorithm according to NIST results belongs to a firm called Idemia, which has an FMR Max/Min of 5(1).

However, like Corsight, the highest false match rate for Idemia’s algorithm was for older West African women. Computer Weekly understands this is a common problem with many of the facial recognition algorithms NIST tests because this group is not typically well-represented in the underlying training data of most firms.

Computer Weekly also confirmed with NIST that the FMR metric cited by Corsight relates to one-to-one verification, rather than the one-to-many situation police forces would be using it in.

This is a key distinction, because if 1,000 people are enrolled in a facial recognition system that was built on one-to-one verification, then the false positive rate will be 1,000 times larger than the metrics held by NIST for FMR testing.

“If a developer implements 1:N (one-to-many) search as N 1:1 comparisons, then the likelihood of a false positive from a search is expected to be proportional to the false match for the 1:1 comparison algorithm,” said NIST scientist Patrick Grother. “Some developers do not implement 1:N search that way.”

Commenting on the contrast between this testing methodology and the practical scenarios the tech will be deployed in, Birmingham Law School’s Yeung said one-to-one is for use in stable environments to provide admission to spaces with limited access, such as airport passport gates, where only one person’s biometric data is scrutinised at a time.

“One-to-many is entirely different – it’s an entirely different process, an entirely different technical challenge, and therefore cannot typically achieve equivalent levels of accuracy,” she said.

Computer Weekly contacted Corsight about every aspect of the story related to its algorithmic testing, including where the “0.0006” figure is drawn from and its various claims to have the “least biased” algorithm.

“The facts presented in your article are partial, manipulated and misleading,” said a company spokesperson. “Corsight AI’s algorithms have been tested by numerous entities, including NIST, and have been proven to be the least biased in the industry in terms of gender and ethnicity. This is a major factor for our commercial and government clients.”

However, Corsight was either unable or unwilling to specify which facts are “partial, manipulated or misleading” in response to Computer Weekly’s request for clarification.

Computer Weekly also contacted Corsight about whether it has done any further testing by running N one-to-one comparisons, and whether it has changed the system’s threshold settings for detecting a match to suppress the false positive rate, but received no response on these points.

While most facial recognition developers submit their algorithms to NIST for testing on an annual or bi-annual basis, Corsight last submitted an algorithm in mid-2022. Computer Weekly contacted Corsight about why this was the case, given that most algorithms in NIST testing show continuous improvement with each submission, but again received no response on this point.

Homeland Security testing

The Essex Police EIA also highlights testing of the Corsight algorithm conducted in 2022 by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), claiming it demonstrated “Corsight’s capability to perform equally across all demographics”.

However, Big Brother Watch’s Hurfurt highlighted that the DHS study focused on bias in the context of true positives, and did not assess the algorithm for inequality in false positives.

This is a key distinction for the testing of LFR systems, as false negatives where the system fails to recognise someone will likely not lead to incorrect stops or other adverse effects, whereas a false positive where the system confuses two people could have more severe consequences for an individual.

The DHS itself also publicly came out against Corsight’s representation of the test results, after the firm claimed in subsequent marketing materials that “no matter how you look at it, Corsight is ranked #1. #1 in overall recognition, #1 in dark skin, #1 in Asian, #1 in female”.

Speaking with IVPM in August 2023, DHS said: “We do not know what this claim, being ‘#1’ is referring to.” The department added that the rules of the testing required companies to get their claims cleared through DHS to ensure they do not misrepresent their performance.

In its breakdown of the test results, IVPM noted that systems of multiple other manufacturers achieved similar results to Corsight. The company did not respond to a request for comment about the DHS testing.

Computer Weekly contacted Essex Police about all the issues raised around Corsight testing, but received no direct response to these points from the force.

Key equality impacts not considered

While Essex Police claimed in its EIA that it “also sought advice from their own independent Data and Digital Ethics Committee in relation to their use of LFR generally”, meeting minutes obtained via FoI rules show that key impacts had not been considered.

For example, when one panel member questioned how LFR deployments could affect community events or protests, and how the force could avoid the technology having a “chilling presence”, the officer present (whose name has been redacted from the document) said “that’s a pretty good point, actually”, adding that he had “made a note” to consider this going forward.

The EIA itself also makes no mention of community events or protests, and does not specify how different groups could be affected by these different deployment scenarios.

Elsewhere in the EIA, Essex Police claims that the system is likely to have minimal impact across age, gender and race, citing the 0.6 threshold setting, as well as NIST and DHS testing, as ways of achieving “equitability” across different demographics. Again, this threshold setting relates to a completely different system used by the Met and South Wales Police.

For each protected characteristic, the EIA has a section on “mitigating” actions that can be taken to reduce adverse impacts.

While the “ethnicity” section again highlights the National Physical Laboratory’s testing of a completely different algorithm, most other sections note that “any watchlist created will be done so as close to the deployment as possible, therefore hoping to ensure the most accurate and up-to-date images of persons being added are uploaded”.

However, Yeung noted that the EIA makes no mention of the specific watchlist creation criteria beyond high-level “categories of images” that can be included, and the claimed equality impacts of that process.

For example, it does not consider how people from certain ethnic minority or religious backgrounds could be disproportionally impacted as a result of their over-representation in police databases, or the issue of unlawful custody image retention whereby the Home Office is continuing to hold millions of custody images illegally in the Police National Database (PND).

While the ethics panel meeting minutes offer greater insight into how Essex Police is approaching watchlist creation, the custody image retention issue was also not mentioned.

Responding to Computer Weekly’s questions about the meeting minutes and the lack of scrutiny of key issues related to UK police LFR deployments, an Essex Police spokesperson said: “Our polices and processes around the use of live facial recognition have been carefully scrutinised through a thorough ethics panel.”

Proportionality and necessity: the Southend ‘intelligence’ case

Instead, the officer present explained how watchlists and deployments are decided based on the “intelligence case”, which then has to be justified as both proportionate and necessary.

On the “Southend intelligence case”, the officer said deploying in the town centre would be permissible because “that’s where the most footfall is, the most opportunity to locate outstanding suspects”.

They added: “The watchlist [then] has to be justified by the key elements, the policing purpose. Everything has to be proportionate and strictly necessary to be able to deploy… If the commander in Southend said, ‘I want to put everyone that’s wanted for shoplifting across Essex on the watchlist for Southend’, the answer would be no, because is it necessary? Probably not. Is it proportionate? I don’t think it is. Would it be proportionate to have individuals who are outstanding for shoplifting from the Southend area? Yes, because it’s local.”

However, the officer also said that, on most occasions, the systems would be deployed to catch “our most serious offenders”, as this would be easier to justify from a public perception point of view. They added that, during the summer, it would be easier to justify deployments because of the seasonal population increase in Southend.

“We know that there is a general increase in violence during those months. So, we don’t need to go down to the weeds to specifically look at grievous bodily harm [GBH] or murder or rape, because they’re not necessarily fuelled by a spike in terms of seasonality, for example,” they said.

“However, we know that because the general population increases significantly, the level of violence increases significantly, which would justify that I could put those serious crimes on that watchlist.”

Commenting on the responses given to the ethics panel, Yeung said they “failed entirely to provide me with confidence that their proposed deployments will have the required legal safeguards in place”.

According to the Court of Appeal judgment against South Wales Police in the Bridges case, the force’s facial recognition policy contained “fundamental deficiencies” in relation to the “who” and “where” question of LFR.

“In relation to both of those questions, too much discretion is currently left to individual police officers,” it said. “It is not clear who can be placed on the watchlist, nor is it clear that there are any criteria for determining where AFR [automated facial recognition] can be deployed.”

Yeung added: “The same applies to these responses of Essex Police force, failing to adequately answer the ‘who’ and ‘where’ questions concerning their proposed facial recognition deployments.

“Worse still, the court stated that a police force’s local policies can only satisfy the requirements that the privacy interventions arising from use of LFR are ‘prescribed by law’ if they are published. The documents were obtained by Big Brother Watch through freedom of information requests, strongly suggesting that these even these basic legal safeguards are not being met.”

Yeung added that South Wales Police’s use of the technology was found to be unlawful in the Bridges case because there was excessive discretion left in the hands of individual police officers, allowing undue opportunities for arbitrary decision-making and abuses of power.

Every decision … must be specified in advance, documented and justified in accordance with the tests of proportionality and necessity. I don’t see any of that happening Karen Yeung, Birmingham Law School

“Every decision – where you will deploy, whose face is placed on the watchlist and why, and the duration of deployment – must be specified in advance, documented and justified in accordance with the tests of proportionality and necessity,” she said.

“I don’t see any of that happening. There are simply vague claims that ‘we’ll make sure we apply the legal test’, but how? They just offer unsubstantiated promises that ‘we will abide by the law’ without specifying how they will do so by meeting specific legal requirements.”

Yeung further added these documents indicate that the police force is not looking for specific people wanted for serious crimes, but setting up dragnets for a wide variety of ‘wanted’ individuals, including those wanted for non-serious crimes such as shoplifting.

“There are many platitudes about being ethical, but there’s nothing concrete indicating how they propose to meet the legal tests of necessity and proportionality,” she said.

“In liberal democratic societies, every single decision about an individual by the police made without their consent must be justified in accordance with law. That means that the police must be able to justify and defend the reasons why every single person whose face is uploaded to the facial recognition watchlist meets the legal test, based on their specific operational purpose.”

Yeung concluded that, assuming they can do this, police must also consider the equality impacts of their actions, and how different groups are likely to be affected by their practical deployments: “I don’t see any of that.”

In response to the concerns raised around watchlist creation, proportionality and necessity, an Essex Police spokesperson said: “The watchlists for each deployment are created to identify specific people wanted for specific crimes and to enforce orders. To date, we have focused on the types of offences which cause the most harm to our communities, including our hardworking businesses.

“This includes violent crime, drugs, sexual offences and thefts from shops. As a result of our deployments, we have arrested people wanted in connection with attempted murder investigations, high-risk domestic abuse cases, GBH, sexual assault, drug supply and aggravated burglary offences. We have also been able to progress investigations and move closer to securing justice for victims.”

Source

A California court has ordered Israeli spyware merchant NSO Group to pay $167.25m in punitive damages, and $444,719 in compensatory damages, for enabling state-backed hacks of mobile devices belonging to 1,400 users of Meta’s WhatsApp messaging service.

The judgment, handed down this week in a federal courthouse, comes five months after US district judge Phyllis Hamilton ruled in favour of Meta in the case, having reviewed evidence that NSO’s Pegasus code had transited WhatsApp’s California-based servers 43 times during May 2019 after exploiting a vulnerability, CVE-2019-3568, in the WhatsApp voice calling feature.

The court had also ruled NSO infringed WhatsApp’s terms of service by using it for malicious or illegal purposes.

Besides spending millions of dollars every year hacking and developing malicious exploits for instant messaging apps, mobile browsers and operating systems, NSO became tainted after campaigners exposed systemic wrongdoing by its customers, mostly government agencies and many in states hostile to Israel.

Details of how its notorious zero-click spyware package, Pegasus, was misused started to trickle out following a lengthy investigation by Citizen Lab, an interdisciplinary laboratory based at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs. Famously, Pegasus was implicated in the murder of a Washington Post journalist by the Saudi Arabian government, among many other things.

NSO has always maintained that it had no responsibility for how its products were used, but repeatedly insisted that it thoroughly vetted its government customers. It appears likely that this disconnect proved a significant factor in Meta’s victory.

NSO has additionally been subjected to US sanctions and has also been sued by Apple, although that case was dropped in 2024 for security reasons.

In a blog post, a Meta spokesperson hailed an “important step forward for privacy and security as the first victory against the development and use of illegal spyware that threatens the safety and privacy of everyone”.

The firm said: “Today, the jury’s decision to force NSO, a notorious foreign spyware merchant, to pay damages is a critical deterrent to this malicious industry against their illegal acts aimed at American companies and the privacy and security of the people we serve.

“For the first time, this trial put spyware executives on the stand and exposed exactly how their surveillance-for-hire system – shrouded in so much secrecy – operates. Put simply, NSO’s Pegasus works to covertly compromise people’s phones with spyware capable of hoovering up information from any app installed on the device. Think anything from financial and location information to emails and text messages, or as NSO conceded: ‘every kind of user data on the phone’. It can even remotely activate the phone’s mic and camera – all without people’s knowledge, let alone authorisation.”

It said it would continue to pursue mercenary spyware suppliers in the courts, describing their “malicious” technologies as a “threat to the entire ecosystem”.

Cyber accountability

“[The] verdict against NSO is an enormous victory for digital rights and for victims of Pegasus spyware around the world,” said Access Now senior tech legal counsel Natalkia Krapiva.

“Congratulations to Meta for sticking with their lawsuit and holding NSO to account. We urge other companies whose infrastructure and users are targeted by NSO and other spyware companies to explore filing similar legal actions.”

Michael De Dora, US policy and advocacy manager at Access Now, added: “This verdict sends a clear message to spyware companies that targeting people through US-based platforms will come with a high price. It underscores the importance of US institutions protecting the digital infrastructure and individuals that rely on it from unlawful surveillance.”

Carolyn Crandall, chief marketing officer at AirMDR, a supplier of artificial intelligence-enabled managed detection and response services, described a defining moment for accountability in cyber security, but said the ruling opened up potentially difficult questions for some organisations.

“By holding a spyware vendor liable for how its tools were used, the court has drawn a clear line between those who knowingly enable illicit hacking and those who build dual-use defensive solutions in good faith,” she said.

“But it also raises an important question: where will courts draw that line next? As more cyber security tools blur the boundary between offence and defence, transparency and intent will become defining factors. Tools like Mimikatz underscore the complexity of dual-use software, originally developed for security research and red teaming, yet widely exploited by threat actors.

“In a shifting legal landscape, how such tools are governed, documented and distributed will increasingly influence how they are interpreted, and whether their creators are pulled into the crosshairs,” said Crandall. “The days of plausible deniability are fading, and vendors must get ahead of that curve.”

Appeal possible

In a statement shared with Courthouse News, NSO’s Gil Lanier said the company maintained its stance that its technology plays a critical role in stopping serious crime and terrorism, and has been “deployed responsibly” by governments. He claimed NSO’s technology had saved many lives, including in the US, and that this evidence had been excluded from the jury’s consideration. The firm has indicated that it plans to appeal.

Meta said it had a long road ahead to collect the awarded damages from the cash-strapped NSO, but added that it does intend to do so. Ultimately, it said, it would like to make a significant donation to digital rights organisations that have been working tirelessly to expose the activities of mercenary spyware firms, and provide guidance and protection to at-risk users.

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I’m a longtime iPhone user, and last year my iPhone changed in ways I never thought possible. I can load third-party app stores, use third-party payment systems, and even sideload apps. I can also change default iPhone apps to third-party equivalents. I definitely never thought any of that would be possible on my iPhone, considering how hard Apple has fought to keep those features off its mobile platforms.

I never asked the EU to compel Apple to make these changes to iOS, and I haven’t personally used any of the “perks” the Digital Markets Act (DMA) forced Apple to offer. I don’t want to sideload apps on my iPhone and won’t use alternative app stores or their payment systems anytime soon. As for default iPhone apps, there’s only one app I’d choose over Apple’s, though I don’t really have to. That’s Google Maps, my go-to navigation app.

But if there’s one default iPhone app worth replacing with a third-party option, it’s Siri. European users might soon get that choice. In the age of genAI software like ChatGPT and Gemini, replacing Siri is a more exciting idea than swapping out any other default app.

Siri was frustrating long before ChatGPT came along. While Apple was the first to showcase voice assistant capabilities for a computing device, it never capitalized on that lead. Amazon and Google quickly offered better voice experiences.

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Once ChatGPT arrived, AI reshaped what voice assistants could do. ChatGPT has an impressive Advanced Voice Mode that lets you talk to the AI. It isn’t a full assistant since it doesn’t integrate with mobile apps, but you can chat with it.

Then there’s Google Assistant, which has evolved into Gemini in the AI era. Gemini Live also lets you interact with the AI by voice.

Siri can’t keep up. Apple won’t give Siri ChatGPT-like capabilities until much later, and the Siri AI experience revealed at WWDC 2024 might not arrive until next year.

Apple is still working on turning Siri into a chatbot. A new Bloomberg report says Apple is developing a new Siri app from scratch. That’ll take time, and Apple probably won’t say much about Siri during the upcoming iOS 19 segment at WWDC 2025.

The same report says Apple is considering letting iPhone users in the EU replace Siri with a third-party assistant. It’s unclear which assistants might be available, but Gemini is the most obvious guess.

Google transitioned Google Assistant to Gemini over the past year. The AI chatbot now replaces Google Assistant on Android phones, and Gemini is expanding to all devices running Google software, including watches, cars, TVs, and Android XR smart glasses.

Gemini is now central to everything Google does, so turning it into an assistant makes sense.

Gemini Live on the Pixel 9 Pro. Image source: Christian de Looper for BGR

You can use Gemini on the iPhone through a standalone app. But what if you could fully replace Siri with Gemini?

I’d say the same for ChatGPT, which I prefer over Gemini, but I’m not sure it could function as effectively as a default assistant.

We don’t yet know what level of access Apple would give third-party assistants. Siri can create calendar events, send texts, and control smart home devices. It doesn’t always get it right, but it interacts with a variety of iPhone apps.

I’d expect similar access for Gemini if it’s allowed to replace Siri. But I can also see a scenario where Gemini is restricted to surfacing info from Google apps only.

In that case, ChatGPT wouldn’t offer much beyond answering questions. Replacing Siri with ChatGPT would just give faster access to OpenAI’s chatbot. But you can already do that with Apple Intelligence on supported iPhones by assigning ChatGPT to the Action button.

There’s a lot of guesswork here. Switching from Siri to a third-party AI assistant is a lot more complicated than swapping the Mail or Maps app for Gmail or Google Maps. If Apple is working on the feature, as required by the EU, we’ll need to wait for an official announcement to see how it will work.

Will I switch from Siri to Gemini if it’s an option? I probably won’t, since I’m not a big Gemini user. But others might want to, especially while Siri lacks AI features.

I’ll say again, Apple should make these features available worldwide, not just in the EU. The continued resistance isn’t doing the company any favors, especially with the reputational damage from recent events. Siri AI turning out to be vaporware and the embarrassing court defeat in the anti-steering case haven’t helped.

It’s probably just a matter of time before more regulators around the world follow the EU’s lead. Apple should embrace these changes globally, including letting users choose their default apps. Most people will likely still stick with Apple’s own apps.

Source

Google will take the stage in California on Tuesday to kick off this year’s Google I/O event. The main keynote will almost certainly focus on Gemini AI advancements, similar to what Google did last year.

After all, Google just gave the world the big Android announcements that would have been the focus of any pre-AI-era I/O event, a sign that there’s no time to focus on the underlying operating system when the Gemini AI features are more pressing.

With Google’s event just around the corner, I can’t help but wonder whether OpenAI will drop an exciting last-minute ChatGPT announcement to steal the spotlight from Google’s I/O 2025 event like it did last year.

The ChatGPT surprise before I/O

OpenAI hosted a ChatGPT livestream a day before Google I/O 2024 kicked off, unveiling the GPT-4o multimodal model that brought support for file uploads in prompts, image understanding, and the incredibly exciting Advanced Voice Mode that lets you chat with the AI just like you talk to people.

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This wasn’t a developer event, and OpenAI didn’t have an audience. But just like that, OpenAI shocked the world by beating Google to the punch with a few key advancements.

A day later, Google unveiled the multimodal Gemini 1.5 Pro model with a massive context window (1 million tokens) and demoed Project Astra, the equivalent of Advanced Voice Mode, which would later become Gemini Live. Project Astra also lets the user give “eyes” to the AI via the phone’s camera or head-worn smart glasses.

Fast-forward to Google I/O 2025, and there’s no sign that OpenAI might host a special event on Monday, a day before Google’s Gemini-focused keynote begins.

Where is GPT-5?

One might argue that OpenAI made various big announcements in the past week. GPT-4.1 is now available inside ChatGPT, a model OpenAI recently launched for developers. The AI was only available through the API. On Friday, OpenAI made another announcement targeting developers: the new Codex AI agent.

These are certainly big developments from OpenAI, but they don’t quite qualify as shock-and-awe announcements. That’s what the GPT-4o and Advanced Voice Mode reveal was ahead of last year’s I/O event. Those features targeted most ChatGPT users, not just developers.

Then again, making GPT-4.1 available in ChatGPT and bringing out the new Codex AI agent ahead of I/O might be the kind of moves OpenAI needs to convince developers to use its AI tools instead of whatever Google announces this week.

Whatever Google is about to unveil, it has to be big. After all, Google didn’t even wait for I/O 2025 to roll out the Gemini 2.5 Pro update a few days ago, which also targets coders. That likely means it has even bigger plans for the upcoming show.

iPad Pro running ChatGPT Image source: José Adorno for BGR

So, if a surprise event were in the cards, what could OpenAI even announce on Monday? Well, the company has launched a few ChatGPT models that are currently in testing. GPT-4.5 will replace GPT-4o, and it’s currently in preview. Then we have the new ChatGPT o3 and o4-mini reasoning models. The former is my go-to AI for most of my ChatGPT chats.

OpenAI could make these models more widely available. It could take GPT-4.5 out of preview mode and announce a few new features.

Also, OpenAI could give us more details about GPT-5, the next big ChatGPT upgrade, which is set to launch this summer. I’ll point out that the GPT-5 release has been delayed by a few months, and we still don’t know what this AI might offer.

What could stun us at this point? Well, how about a ChatGPT model that knows what tool to use and when to use it? An AI that decides when to reason, when to search the web, and when to use Canvas to answer the user’s prompt. Maybe it’ll choose on its own to create a Deep Research report or use other agents.

We know OpenAI wants to offer that kind of functionality, but we don’t know when it will be available.

Regarding AI agents, the Operator is still only available to ChatGPT Pro users. That’s the AI agent that can browse the web and even make purchases for you. Launching a version of Operator for the ChatGPT Free and Plus tiers could be the kind of move that plays well ahead of I/O 2025.

Then again, OpenAI doesn’t have to repeat last year’s stunt. ChatGPT remains the main chatbot in town, and it’ll probably stay that way for a while.

Google is playing the same game

If anything, Google proved in December that it wasn’t comfortable with OpenAI’s ChatGPT announcements. Google unveiled Gemini 2.0, its first AI agents, and the Android XR platform, while OpenAI was dropping a new ChatGPT announcement every day before Christmas.

In hindsight, some of those OpenAI reveals were major, so it makes sense for Google to bring Gemini news to the forefront. Google’s AI agents and Android XR clearly weren’t ready for prime time. Nearly six months later, those products are still unavailable to customers, and we might learn more about them at Google I/O 2025.

Then again, we’ve seen plenty of reports suggesting that big AI firms like OpenAI and Google are struggling to deliver the next big wave of AI innovations. That could explain the GPT-5 delays and the absence of Android XR hardware in stores, from Samsung or other brands.

Maybe the real reason OpenAI won’t host a surprise ChatGPT event on Monday is that its development schedule just doesn’t allow for product reveals done purely for marketing effect.

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The government is to roll out passkey technology across its digital services this year as a simpler and more secure alternative to remembering complex passwords.

Government websites will start offering the public the ability to use passkeys – cryptographic keys stored on phones or laptops – to log into government websites, including HM Revenue & Customs and NHS sites, over the next 12 months.

The move comes amid heightened concerns over the security offered by passwords following cyber attacks that have disrupted retailers Marks and Spencer, Co-op and Harrods in recent weeks.

The NHS is one of the first government organisations in the world to offer passkeys to give patients secure access to hospital and pharmacy websites.

The NHS processes one million authentications a month and now has more than 100 organisations using the secure log-in service.

Passkeys offer a greater level of security than passwords and SMS two-factor authentication, both of which can be compromised by hackers.

They allow people to log into websites securely, using their own mobile phones, tablets or laptops to verify their identity by entering a PIN or using facial recognition.

Artificial intelligence and digital government minister Feryal Clark said the government would roll out passkeys across Gov.uk websites this year in what he described as a “major step forward” in strengthening the UK’s digital defences.

The government is working with OneLogin, which provides secure login services, to roll out passkeys across government websites.

This week, Microsoft also announced plans to replace passwords with secure passkeys by making new Microsoft accounts “passwordless by default”.

The company said in a blog post that it aimed to eliminate the use of passwords on its products over time.

According to Microsoft research, passkeys allow users to log in more quickly, saving one minute per login when compared to entering a username, password and SMS code.

The move to passkeys on government websites could save several million pounds annually, and will make it easier to access government services, said Clark.

“Replacing older methods like SMS verification with modern, secure passkeys will make it quicker and easier for people to access essential services – without needing to remember complex passwords or wait for text messages,” she added.

“This shift will not only save users valuable time when interacting with government online, but it will reduce fraud and phishing risks that damage our economic growth,” she said.

The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), part of GCHQ, said passkey adoption is “vital for transforming cyber resilience at a national scale”.

The organisation believes that after years of development, passkeys, which are supported by over 98% of consumer devices, are now ready to be widely deployed.

NCSC chief technology officer (CTO) Ollie Whitehouse said the move would protect against common cyber threats such as phishing and credential stuffing.

“By adopting passkey technology, the government is not only leading by example by strengthening the security of its services, but also making it easier and faster for citizens to access them,” he said.

By adopting passkey technology, the government is not only leading by example by strengthening the security of its services, but also making it easier and faster for citizens to access them Ollie Whitehouse, NCSC

“We strongly advise all organisations to implement passkeys wherever possible to enhance security, provide users with faster, frictionless logins, and save significant costs on SMS authentication.”

The NCSC has joined the FIDO Alliance, described as the global body shaping the future of password-free authentication, which will allow the UK to play a role in developing passkey standards.

The cyber security organisation is working with technology suppliers and organisations to make passkeys widely available as an option for users.

It is also developing passkey support for the MyNCSC portal, which allows companies to access cyber security services, with availability expected later this year.

Retailers Marks & Spencer, Co-op and Harrods were hit by ransomware attacks over Easter, after hackers reportedly posed as employees and asked the company’s IT helpdesk to reset their passwords.

The NCSC’s national resilience director, Jonathan Ellison, along with CTO Whitehouse, advised organisations to review their helpdesk password reset processes, including their procedures to authenticate the identity of employees, following the attacks. 

“Preparation and resilience do not mean just having good defences to keep out attackers. No matter how good your defences are, sometimes the attacker will be successful,” they wrote in a blog post.

Stuart McKenzie, managing director of Mandiant Consulting, part of Google, told Computer Weekly that two-factor authentication and passwords can be circumvented by hackers and cyber criminals.

He said hackers can duplicate a person’s mobile phone SIM and use it to intercept two-factor authentication codes, adding: “SMS-based authentication is a really weak technology.”

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This Tuesday, all eyes will be on Mountain View, California, as Google I/O 2025 kicks off at the Shoreline Amphitheatre. The annual developer conference has served many purposes over the years, as the home to hardware launches and huge software updates, but recently, Google has started to shift the event’s focus almost entirely to artificial intelligence.

With Android Material 3 Expressive redesign having already been unveiled, we aren’t expecting any significant Android 16 news during the event. We’re also not holding our breath for the Pixel 10 or a new Pixel Fold this week. AI will once again be the star of the show in 2025, but Google will also share some updates on Android XR.

How to watch Google I/O 2025

Google I/O 2025 takes place on May 20th and May 21st, but the conference officially starts with a keynote address on Tuesday, May 20th at 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET. You can watch along live in the embedded stream from YouTube below:

After the opening I/O 2025 keynote, Google will host a separate developer keynote at 1:30 p.m. PT / 4:30 p.m. ET to show off how all of the “latest technologies and Gemini ecosystem enhance developer workflows, boost productivity, and enable innovative user experiences across Android devices, web browsers, and more.”

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There are dozens of sessions taking place over the two days covering Android, Chrome, Google Cloud, Google Play, Gemini, and more. You can find the full schedule on the Google I/O website, and a breakdown of all the sessions that will have a livestream.

What to expect at Google I/O 2025

As noted above, AI will be front and center at this year’s I/O. Google spent hours discussing AI innovations last May — we expect the same this year. There was a time when this “developer” conference also had a few hardware reveals to keep the normies entertained, but Google has moved away from that in recent years.

If you’re curious to see how Google plans to further integrate AI into its software and services, there will be plenty of Gemini talk during the opening keynote. If you’re more interested in new phones, tablets, and smartwatches, this might not be your cup of tea.

That said, Google has also confirmed that Android XR will be a focal point of this year’s event. Meta has temporarily cornered the market on semi-stylish augmented reality glasses, but we know that the likes of Google and Apple aren’t far behind. We wouldn’t be surprised to see Google’s competitor to the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses this week.

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The areas of artificial intelligence (AI) young people are interested in varies between genders, according to research by InnovateHer.

The social enterprise asked more than a thousand students between the ages of 12 and 17 their opinions on AI, and found more boys than girls interested in the subject – 69% and 54% respectively – but also differing areas of focus, with girls worried about AI bias and boys concerned about cyber security.

“While it’s encouraging to see such interest [in AI] from both sides, these differences risk reinforcing long-standing stereotypes,” said Chelsea Slater, co-founder and CEO of InnovateHer. “We believe these patterns stem from the messages young people receive from an early age about careers, tech and who belongs in those spaces.

“At InnovateHer, we’re working to challenge those narratives and ensure all young people can see themselves in the future of AI.”

The areas of AI students were interested in depended on their gender – girls are predominantly concerned with ethics, policy and data analysis, while boys’ main area of focus was on on machine learning, robotics and AI development.

This divide between male and female participants in the technology sector is not a new thing, and men are more likely than women to pursue technology careers for a variety of reasons – in fact, women and young girls feel they are sometimes actively discouraged from joining the sector, and misconceptions about the skill sets needed for a tech role leave women feeling the sector isn’t for them.

There are also concerns in the tech sector about automation replacing a large number of women’s jobs, and while many argue it will create as many as it replaces, only 29% of girls believed AI would create more jobs in the future, compared with 53% of boys.

Almost 70% of girls actually think AI will make it harder for women to pursue technology careers, partly because of the bias it may create in the hiring process, especially because of the lack of role models already in the tech sector.

A lack of role models is often cited as a reason why girls avoid the tech sector, but it also means that the fewer women involved in the technology sector, the fewer women will be part of the decision-making processes surrounding AI, and the more likely it is these technologies will be built with biases.

A large number of girls – some 79% – think there should be more stringent regulations surrounding AI, specifically to prevent worsening AI bias, with 71% expressing concerns about AI reinforcing the gender bias that already exists in many elements of decision-making in the tech workplace.

Boys, on the other hand, are less concerned about bias and more concerned about regulating AI to bolster cyber security and address privacy risks.

But there are other concerns among girls when it comes to AI. Almost 70% of female students linked the use of AI recommendation algorithms used in social media to poor mental health, naming negative perceptions of body image and online bulling as some of the negative impacts social media algorithms can have.

While 29% of boys noted that AI can play a part in toxicity online, fewer of them linked this to a decline in mental wellness.

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The battle between Wi-Fi operators and telcos over the use of key parts of the coveted 6 GHz wireless frequency range in Europe has taken a significant step, with a collection of leading European telecoms operators urging regulatory action to make available the complete upper 6 GHz band for the mobile comms services they provide.

Access to 6 GHz has been an issue for some time now. Telcos have argued that enabling this band for mobile use will ensure consumers and businesses receive even faster and more reliable 5G services over the next five to 10 years, while avoiding a mobile capacity crunch caused by soaring demand for bandwidth as more devices and services, such as augmented reality headsets, health sensors and vehicles, are connected to mobile networks that require greater processing power and capacity.

In an open letter entitled Essential action for europe’s mobile future, a collection of leading telcos say they will commit to support Europe’s global technology leadership by developing and investing in infrastructure, but only if the necessary spectrum resources are made available. Signatories to the letter include A1 Telekom Austria, BT Group, DTAG, KPN, Elisa, Orange, Proximus, Telefónica, Telia, TIM, United Group and Vodafone Group.

The telcos believe that allocating the upper section of the 6 GHz band for mobile – with the lower part already assigned to Wi-Fi services in many countries – would be the best outcome for customers, industries and digital societies in general.

In particular, they note that the upper 6 GHz band is a critical opportunity for launching 6G networks in Europe, and should be an integral part of Europe’s future mobile infrastructure. That is, with current traffic growth projections, existing mobile spectrum will be needed to sustain 5G services and would not be available to launch 6G.

They ask the region’s regulatory bodies to take what they call essential action to secure mobile digital connectivity’s future in Europe, and to make available the complete upper 6 GHz band for mobile for the benefit of Europe’s economy and society.

Moreover, they state their concern that access to upper 6 GHz band is still sought for Wi-Fi by US stakeholders, despite the recent availability of a new but widely unused block of 480 MHz in the lower 6 GHz band, expressly reserved for this purpose.

The letter says: “The decisions and the strategic approach that Europe takes now on the upper 6 GHz band will have profound and long-lasting implications on the ability of Europe’s telecoms sector to enable [a profitable] future.

“With escalating demands on current spectrum capacity and with future services including 6G on the horizon, it is critical that the entirety of the upper 6 GHz band (6.425-7.125 GHz) is made available to mobile networks,” it says. “Mobile alone is expected to contribute to 8.4% of global GDP by 2030. Without access to the upper 6 GHz, mobile’s impact on GDP growth will be curtailed significantly. 

“If the decision to make the upper 6 GHz band available to European mobile operators is delayed, while US technology interests are permitted to secure further 6 GHz capacity, Europe’s competitiveness would be threatened,” the letter continues. “This would stifle the future economic potential of European business and society and ultimately erode Europe’s influence over its own digital future and global competitiveness.

“Without the full availability of the upper 6 GHz for mobile networks, any future 6G services in this band would be significantly curtailed and ultimately jeopardise Europe’s opportunity to play a leading role in 6G deployment. It would also fragment the global ecosystem for 6G, leaving Europe unable to benefit from economies of scale.”

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Amazon Web Services (AWS) has set its sights on helping 100,000 people across the UK gain skills in artificial intelligence (AI) by 2030, having published research that suggests at least one business is adopting AI every minute.

The skills push will be made possible by a geographical expansion of the AWS Skills to Jobs Tech Alliance, which launched in 2023 to help 380,000 students in America, Egypt and Spain acquire the skills needed for entry-level cloud and AI jobs.

The initiative is now being extended to the UK, as confirmed at the AWS Summit in London on Wednesday 30 April 2025, in support of the government’s push to position the UK as a leader in AI.

Speaking to Computer Weekly, John Davies, managing director for worldwide public sector UK, Germany and international organisations at AWS, said the government clearly understands how big an opportunity AI could be for the UK economy, based on the contents of its recently published AI Opportunities Action Plan policy paper.

“The government has talked about the opportunity for [AI to generate] £45bn in operational efficiency savings, but what is sometimes lost on the discussion is how that will be realised … and part of that comes down to addressing the skills piece,” he said.

Growing need for AI skills

The AWS Summit coincided with the publication of the latest edition of the AWS Unlocking the UK’s AI potential report, which shines a light on how big a barrier access to skills could be for businesses wanting to adopt AI.

The report, compiled by consultancy firm Strand Partners, stated that AI literacy will be a requirement for nearly half (47%) of new UK jobs over the next three years, based on feedback received from 1,000 businesses that participated in the research.

Presently, though, just under a third (27%) of the businesses that participated in the research said they felt their workforce was adequately prepared, from a skills perspective, for AI use to become more pervasive throughout their organisation.

Just 12 months ago, we talked about the extraordinary potential of generative AI. Today, we are witnessing real, great [developments]. What was once improbable is now possible Alison Kay, AWS

The research also featured a call to action of sorts for enterprises to think bigger and more ambitiously about how they could put AI to use within their organisations, with its data suggesting that just 15% of large firms have a “comprehensive AI strategy”.

“Over half (55%) of large enterprises reported they are consistently using the technology, up from 41% last year; however, their use of AI remains surface-level, meaning they are focused on basic efficiency gains,” the report stated.

By contrast, many startups are whole-heartedly embracing AI by integrating the technology into the “centre of their business strategy” and using it to “develop new products, and transform their industries”, the report continued.

On this point, the research stated that 59% of startups have adopted AI, with 36% of them committing to developing new AI-driven products and services, compared with 25% of large enterprises.

“If this emerging gap is not addressed, there is a risk that a longtail of businesses, particularly large enterprises, may miss out on reaping the transformative benefits of AI,” the report warned.

“Given enterprises are responsible for 48% of UK turnover, this could prevent the UK from fully realising the economic, productive and competitive edge that AI can unlock.”

Davies said the gap exists because startups are more “digital native in their orientation”, making it easier for them to adopt and incorporate new AI functionality into their “core business applications”.

Enterprises and governments, meanwhile, are more likely to be entrenched in legacy tech and may have more complexity within their existing IT estates which makes it harder for them to move as quickly on AI as a startup could.

Even so, it’s important that enterprises do not fall too far behind. “We’re very much at an inflection point now where these things [AI] are reality – as 52% of businesses are using AI now, and that’s up significantly,” Davies continued. “This is faster [adoption] than we saw with digital mobile telecoms in the early 2000s. It’s one of the fastest growths in technology we’ve ever seen.”

And for this reason, the target audience for the AWS AI skills push is not just techies, but people in a much wider variety of job functions and roles, he said.

AI is for everyone

“Addressing the cloud skills gap was very much an initiative targeted at IT professionals, whereas AI is an everyone thing,” said Davies.

And what is heartening, he added, is the curiosity people already seem to have about using consumer-grade, generative AI tools for assistance with everyday tasks.

“I definitely don’t think that hurts because it shows that people are open to using it,” he said. “What I do think is critical is that we don’t just think about how the IT profession is going to use it, but we need to think about doctors, lawyers and social workers … that’s where we’re trying to go with Skills to Jobs Tech Alliance.”

AWS will be working in collaboration with educational institutions in the UK to achieve this, according to Davies, by getting universities to incorporate the Tech Alliance’s educational materials in courses that are seemingly unrelated to IT.

He cited the University of East London as an example, as it will be offering students optional, elective modules on AI as a companion to the degree courses they have signed up for.

“If you were studying law, you could do [an elective AI module], and when you think about the opportunities [having AI skills] would open up for people in that field to surface case precedents, for example, I think it’s the non-IT cases that have the most potential.”

Accelerating AI adoption

The pace at which AI adoption is progressing was a key theme of the AWS Summit keynote, with Alison Kay, vice-president and managing director for the UK and Ireland at AWS, shining a light on how various startups are using AI to their advantage.

“Just 12 months ago, we talked about the extraordinary potential of generative AI, and today we are no longer just talking about the potential, but witnessing real, great [developments],” she said. “What was once improbable is now possible.”

Kay went on to reference the work that UK-based AWS customer Sonrai Analytics is doing with AI in the life sciences sector to accelerate research into disease.

“Research timelines have been reduced by 50%, error rates have dropped by 80%, and each experiment [the company does] is saving over $20,000 in costs.”

The company, founded in 2018, is an AI precision medicine startup whose multi-modal platform is used by biotech and pharmaceutical companies to manage, process and analyse clinical, genomic, image and patient data to accelerate new drug discoveries and disease detection.

Speaking to Computer Weekly at the summit, Gerard Loughran, head of engineering at Sonrai Analytics, said it is fair to say that enterprises in the healthcare and biotech space are slower to adopt new technologies.

“Some of the hospitals, biotech and medtech companies that I previously worked with didn’t even adopt cloud in some cases, back in the 2010s, and for good reasons,” he said.

“A lot of the biotech and pharma companies we work with have a lot of biologists, mathematicians and very capable individuals who understand cancer and disease types, but they don’t necessarily have the same investment for having cloud, datacentre and other technical engineers [on staff].”

So, while the AWS research highlights the drawbacks of enterprises falling behind startups that are already building whole businesses on AI technologies, Loughran suggests the situation is a little more nuanced than the cloud giant’s data suggests. 

This situation creates opportunities for companies like Sonrai to plug the tech skills gaps to help large healthcare companies thrive and excel in the AI era. “A lot of our work is about removing the engineering complexity so they can just focus on the science,” he said.  

New roles, opportunities and innovations

Scott Marcar, group CIO of NatWest Bank, told Computer Weekly that not all enterprises are lagging behind their startup counterparts when it comes to AI adoption, with the banking sector being a prime example of a vertical market that has a long history of using the technology.

“There’s nothing new in banks using AI. If you think about the way the market works, trading, and how we price risk, for example, there has been AI embedded in banks for a very long time,” said Marcar.

“Most of [NatWest] has AI embedded in it in one shape or form, and where generative AI is concerned, I would say we are reasonably advanced. And if you look at the Evident AI index, we are ranked 18th in the world.”

AI is such an amazing capability for people to have at their fingertips. Everyone should be using it Scott Marcar, NatWest Bank

On this point, he said the bank has “hundreds of use cases already” for AI, and the company is “investing significant amounts of money with OpenAI”.

The company has also rolled out Microsoft Copilot to its staff and has its own “safe-wrapped” version of ChatGPT called AI-Den that is available for tens of thousands of its staff to use.

“Also, around 26% of our Java code today is already generated by AI, which is a pretty impressive stat given we’ve only really been using it about six months,” continued Marcar.

“I’m pretty sure that every role we have today will be fundamentally transformed [by AI], but I also think we’re going to see a massive new set of roles created, as well as lots of new opportunities and innovations.”

He also shares AWS’s confidence that the UK is in a prime position to lead on AI. “For an industry [tech] that has been dominated by the positioning of Silicon Valley [as the epicentre] … I think we can lead on AI and become a real centre around the world for AI expertise,” he said.

“And with the country’s heritage [in this field], with things like DeepMind, we’ve got a history of doing great things, and I think we’ve got a responsibility to really take advantage of that.”

NatWest is doing its bit by teaching all 70,000 of its staff how to use AI. “It’s such an amazing capability for people to have at their fingertips. Everyone should be using it,” he said. “Because the reality is, there are going to be two types of roles in the world: those who use AI and those who don’t. And those who don’t will be left behind very quickly.”

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