Artificial Intelligence: Regulation

Viscount Colville of Culross Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

I do not think “perverse” is justified. GDPR Article 22 addresses automated individual decision-making, but, as I am sure the noble Lord knows, the DPDI Bill recasts Article 22 as the right to specific safeguards rather than a general prohibition on automated decision-making, so that subjects have to be informed about it and can seek a human review of decisions. It also defines meaningful human involvement.

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

When I asked the Minister in October why deepfakes could not be banned, he replied that he could not see a pathway to do so, as they were developed anywhere in the world. In the Online Safety Act, tech companies all over the world are now required not to disseminate harms to children. Why can the harms of deepfakes not be similarly proscribed?

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

I remember the question. It is indeed very important. There are two pieces to preventing deepfakes being presented to British users: one is where they are created and the second is how they are presented to those users. They are created to a great extent overseas, and we can do very little about that. As the noble Viscount said, the Online Safety Act creates a great many barriers to the dissemination and presentation of deepfakes to a British audience.