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Northern Ireland Office: Artificial Intelligence

Original answer

The Government is committed to harnessing the benefits of artificial intelligence to improve the productivity of the Civil Service and the quality of public services. The Northern Ireland Office (NIO) provides officials, Ministers and special advisers with access to a secure, enterprise-grade generative AI tool that has been assured to the appropriate security standards and approved for official use. Ministers, special advisers and officials may only use generative AI tools that the NIO has approved for official use. The use of publicly available or consumer versions of generative AI tools for official business is not permitted by the NIO.

Approved enterprise tools are configured so that departmental data is held securely and is not used to train publicly available AI models. The use of generative AI across government is governed by the cross-government Generative AI Framework for HMG and the AI Playbook for the UK Government, which set out the principles for the safe, responsible and effective use of these tools.

The answer was corrected by Hilary Benn (Labour)

on Wednesday, 8 July 2026 on behalf of the Northern Ireland Office.

Corrected answer

The Government is committed to harnessing the benefits of artificial intelligence to improve the productivity of the Civil Service and the quality of public services. The Northern Ireland Office (NIO) provides officials, Ministers and special advisers with access to a secure, enterprise-grade generative AI tool that has been assured to the appropriate security standards and approved for official use. Ministers, special advisers and officials may only use generative AI tools that the NIO has approved for official use. The use of publicly available or consumer versions of generative AI tools for official business is not permitted by the NIO.

Approved enterprise tools are configured so that departmental data is held securely and is not used to train publicly available AI models. The use of generative AI across government is governed by the cross-government Generative AI Framework for HMG and the AI Playbook for the UK Government, which set out the principles for the safe, responsible and effective use of these tools.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

8481

Session

2026-27

Subjects

Northern Ireland Office Artificial intelligence

Link

View this Written question on www.parliament.uk