A new taskforce launched by the government to help the UK adopt next-generation artificial intelligence technologies – including image generation tools such as Midjourney and chat tools like ChatGPT from OpenAI – has been given £100m in initial startup funding. The government says it will “ensure sovereign capabilities” in an increasingly important field.

As part of the recent budget, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt allocated £900m to boost compute power including making resources available for training foundation AI models. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) says the aim of the £100m taskforce is to ensure the country can capitalize on AI, which is expected to increase global GDP by 7% up to 2030 and add billions to the UK GDP figure.