AI Regulation: Have Your Say to The CMA

The artificial intelligence (AI), that has emerged over the past five to ten years has really changed insurance and the wider digital world.

AI has the potential to transform much of what people and businesses do. To ensure that innovation in AI continues in a way that benefits consumers, businesses and the UK economy, the government has asked regulators, including the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), to think about how the innovative development and deployment of AI can be supported against five overarching principles: safety, security and robustness; appropriate transparency and explainability; fairness; accountability and governance; and contestability and redress.

This initial review will:

• examine how the competitive markets for foundation models and their use could evolve
• explore what opportunities and risks these scenarios could bring for competition and consumer protection
• produce guiding principles to support competition and protect consumers as AI foundation models develop

The CMA is seeking views and evidence from stakeholders and welcomes submissions by 2 June 2023. The CMA encourages interested parties to respond and be proactive in identifying relevant evidence. This is an excellent chance for established insurance giants who crunch consumer data on risk, plus insurtechs looking to innovate in terms in product development, to put forward their views to the CMA.

For consumers it’s also a chance for concerns about increased – and more personal – data gathering, assumptions being made about individuals based on AI, plus discrimination by blanket AI decision-making, such as denial of services, including insurance.

Following evidence gathering and analysis, the CMA will publish a report which sets out its findings in September 2023.

All updates on the CMA’s work in this area can be found on the artificial intelligence case page.