UK technology leaders are right to argue that the UK needs to take AI sovereignty seriously.

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But another part of AI sovereignty risks being overlooked: the content that makes the technology useful in the first place.

The UK possesses an asset in its books, journalism, academic research and wider creative output. AI gives us an opportunity to turn that work into a valuable UK export, but only if we build the market to allow that to happen.

As digital advertising rose, content produced in this country helped fuel the growth of predominantly overseas technology businesses, while many of the industries that created it struggled to capture their share of the economic value generated. We need to ensure we don’t make the same mistake with AI.

The sovereignty debate can’t stop at computing power, data centres, and models. It must extend to the high-quality, human-created content those models and AI products depend on. That means we also need sovereign data.

That doesn’t mean putting up walls around UK content or preventing AI companies from using it. I actually mean the opposite. We have an opportunity to create a thriving market for trusted content, enabling AI developers to access it legitimately and at scale while........

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