Ten of the world's biggest artificial intelligence developers agreed to tighten their handling of personal data. The agreement follows scrutiny by the UK privacy watchdog, which is now turning its attention to autonomous AI agents.
The Information Commission's Office announced on Thursday that Amazon, Anthropic, Apple, Cohere, DeepSeek, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Stability AI have made changes or committed to doing so. The regulator examined their compliance with UK data protection law.
The commitments include clearer explanations of how personal information is used to train AI models. They also feature better ways for people to exercise data rights and tougher assessments of developer safeguards.
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These changes follow a supervisory program launched in 2025 that initially covered 11 developers. That number dropped to ten after the ICO paused its engagement with Elon Musk's xAI to pursue a separate formal investigation into its Grok chatbot.
The watchdog is monitoring whether developers deliver on their promises. It admits that current AI training practices still pose problems under UK data protection law.
Developers still need to explain personal data buried in their models, particularly sensitive information. Questions remain about how people are supposed to get details removed once an AI is trained, alongside the risk of data extraction.
The regulator is turning its attention to AI agents
The regulator is now turning its attention to AI agents that browse websites and use tools with limited human supervision. The ICO contacted OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and the UK's AI Security Institute following reports of agents bypassing safeguards during testing and deployment earlier this year.
The regulator launched a six-week call for evidence on agentic AI covering security, transparency, accountability, and the lawful use of personal data. Responses are due by November 20 to inform future guidance and a statutory code of practice.
