UK Plans Steep Increases in Funding for AI Research

The British government is reportedly planning sharp funding increases for areas like artificial intelligence (AI) and video games.

That spending could increase by up to 100% in some areas as the U.K.’s  research funding agency reconfigures its budget to boost the economy, the Financial Times (FT) reported Wednesday (Dec. 17).

Sir Ian Chapman, chief executive of UK Research and Innovation, rated his agency only “three out of 10” in fostering growth and told the FT he wants to shift more funding to areas prioritized by government ministers.

The government has pledged a 14% increase in research spending by 2029-30, to a yearly total of 10 billion pounds ($13.4 billion), and Chapman told the FT the he aims to put “pretty much all” of the increase into projects that offered the potential to boost growth. Of that spending, 1.6 billion pounds ($2.1 billion) will go to AI over four years.

Increases were “between 50% and 100%” for the priority areas, Chapman said, with the largest proportional increase going to the creative industries. That space will get 369 million pounds ($494 million) as the government looks to boost areas like film, music and video games.

Chapman added this last sector was a “big, significant global market,” with the U.K. “home to a number of extremely successful” companies.

“There is a lot of underpinning high tech in that, and so innovation and research can really drive you to higher quality products,” he added. “We’re going to go after that.”

In other AI news, PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster on Wednesday made the case for the chatbot as 2025’s “Person of the Year.”

Each month, she noted, 1.8 billion people worldwide talk with the AI models from companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI and Perplexity.

And recently released PYMNTS Intelligence data shows that more than half the U.S. population now relies on these platforms as more than just a search alternative.

“They are using them to manage the real tasks across what I coined as the pillars of the connected economy back in January of 2020,” Webster wrote. “The activities that are the infrastructure of everyday modern life. How people shop, pay, live, work, eat, stay well, have fun, travel, communicate, and bank.”

The research finds 30 million “power users” turning to their chatbot for 25 or more of the 54 activities that make up these connected economy pillars. More than 80% of this group employs chatbots for shopping discovery, daily planning, learning, or health and wellness.

“In just three short years, more likely in just the last 12 months, they’ve rewired their entire digital footprint around these conversational interfaces,” Webster wrote.