What do the Palais Royal and the Royal Society have in common? They started with a small group of people who believed they could make a difference, that their individual fields and specialisms were at once very important in their own right but also had broader significance to society, culture and the political debates of their day. They didn’t (at least at the beginning) meet in grandiose environments: they started in coffee houses and restaurants, pubs and bars. They didn’t wait for institutions such as government or royalty to initiate change. Instead they could see the changes that were coming and followed the trail of their own conviction, confidence and commitment to self-determination. They set out to change their local environments and actually changed the world with their brave ideas about law, science, innovation and creativity. They were hoping to revolutionise their fields and specialisms, but instead they sparked into life the age of enlightenment.

This is the final Cripps’ ICO Gen AI consultation response. As editor and co-author, I have the pleasure of seeing all the complex thinking and debating of the many contributors as they build their thoughts on this challenging topic. In some respects, it is a continuation of the same commitment and conviction which inspired the enlightenment thinkers. Our purpose is to provide the ICO with guidance on how to frame its upcoming reports and guidance on Gen AI and how existing data protection laws can fit into that, but I would not limit our ambition to that end alone. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, most of us can see that trying to force new technologies into old law is doomed to be clumsy and imprecise. The time has come for some new thinking and new law to help address the challenges that Gen AI presents to us all.

To all of the contributors to this fifth consultation response (and those who contributed to others) I would say this: never – ever – lose sight of your brilliant achievements in producing this consultation response. I’ve seen how hard you worked, how much effort you put into it all and how committed you are. You are the vanguard of this new area of law. Your thoughts will shape the future of this field, and perhaps reverberate further still. I am proud of this project, but I am far more proud of you.

Kind regards, Matthew.