♪ ♪ narrator: funding for this presentation of this program is provided by... woman: architect. bee keeper. mentor. a raymond james financial advisor tailors advice to help you live your life. life well planned. narrator: funding was also provided by, the freeman foundation. and by judy and peter blum kovler foundation; pursuing solutions for america's neglected needs. announcer: and now, "bbc news".

>> hello. i'm lewis vaughan jones. you are watching "the context" on bbc news. pres. biden: companies must prioritize systems by safeguarding against threats. we will work with both parties to develop appropriate legislation and regulation. i'm pleased that leader schumer and jeffries and others in the congress are making this a top but is in priority. -- bipartisan priority. the group will be critical for the responsibility and safety by designed to earn the trust of americans. lewis: predent biden trying to get ahead of the threats of artificial intelligence, working with tech companies to try to protect consumers, but full

international regulation is the big challenge still had. also on the program, in the u.k., new figures show rising rents help the king's personal finances. amsterdam fans cruise ships in the city, trying to cut pollution. andy barbenheimer phenomenon -- the "barbie" and "oppenheimer" films finally released. how has their pr work so well? welcome to the program. we will start with the comments from u.s. president joe biden in the last 90 minutes or so trying to get ahead of the threats posed by ai. he has been working with seven big tech company's including the parent companies of google and facebook to try to work out guidelines, frameworks, things they can do to protect people. that includes things like making it transparent, clear, when

content is ai-generated, a digital watermark, and also things like protecting children. it is a big challenge. he says the u.s. will play a leading role when it comes to attempt to secure international regulation when it comes to ai, artificial intelligence. let's take a listen. pres. biden: we will see more technology change in the next 10 years than in the last 50 years. has been an astounding revelation to me, quite frankly. artificial intelligence is going to transform the lives of people around the world. the group here will be critical in shepherding that innovation with personality -- with responsibility and safety by designed to earn the trust of americans, and quite frankly, as i met with world leaders, all the g7 folks said the same thing. social media has shown us the harm that powerful technology can do without the right safeguards in place.

and i said at the state of union, congress needs to pass bipartisan legislation and post strict limits on personal data collection, ban targeted advertisements to kids, require committees to but health and safety first. but we must be clear eyed and vigilant about the threats emerging -- from emerging technologies that can pose to our democracy and our values. lewis: let's go live to new york. michelle fleury is there. great to see you. this is such a huge issue, isn't it, president biden trying to get out in front of it. what do you make of what he had to say? michelle: i think at the moment we are seeing big technology companies not just in america, around the world, and kind of arms race to develop ai tools. this is an attempt to set up some guardrails. it is very first baby step, and that is the way to look at this. after all, is our voluntary. they don't carry that weight of law.

that would require congress to act. and so this is just an agrment between the white house and the companies involved, seven major companies from a metta to google to microsoft to amazon to the makers of chatgpt and others. they are saying, look, we are happy to have our technology looked at for secury reasons, we are happy to introduce some kind of tool that would show that something is ai-generated, like a watermark system, which might help avoid problems with misinformation in the future so you know when something is real, when something was made by ai tools. this is hugely important. but again, i think most experts would say this is only a first step, and that more needs to come not just from the u.s., but at a global level. lewis: let's look at the second kind of issue that you touched on there, is regulation. how difficult is that step fm

companies getting together and having a voluntary code to international, worldwide regulation? michelle: i think we are at the beginning of that. earlier this week you had the unc critic counsel -- un security council, a few miles from where i'm sitting right now, hold their first meeting on the risks of ai. there are some states who say what is needed is a body like the internationaatomic energy agency to oversee a global set of rules that would apply to ai companies around the world. but if you look at the history of agencies like that, they have taken a very long time to develop. we don't fully know the capabilities of this technology. it's just what we anticipate. the idea tha you can come up with rules, and might be years before we see them. we might need to see some sort of disaster happened before you get the urgency, the catalyst to develop and put rules in place for some this is the first step,

and the u.s. is raising the issue and trying to lead on it. but again, it is just the white house with a biden saying he is ready to take executive action because it might be some time before congress gets to it in terms of creative legislation, in part because it is pretty divided and we only have one year dylan election. -- till an election. the commodore makes that tricky. lewis: michelle, thanks for that. we will speak to the executive director of a center for technology and democracy at the university of cambridge. thank you for coming on the program. >> thank you for having me. lewis: biden gives these comments are talks about these guidelines for these seven tech companies. what do you make of them? >> wel it is a great step for the biden administration. they have been on the front foot in terms of releasing an ai bill of rights. they are trying to do something, as the correspondent said, by executive action, and very poibly voluntary commitments

are the best they will be able to do in this political environment. but it doesn't go far enough for what we need. lewis: so what do we need, then? >> here in the u.k. we have a sets of legislation inlace, we have a growing responsible ai ecosystem. the u.k. is positioning itself to be the place for responsible ai, design, develop and, research. those pieces can be in place if we have the right tools, we have the right commitment to policy change, and we have public engagement and involvement around these questions. right now what we see out of the white house is a set of commitments of companies is saying they are willing to mark their own exam papers and they are willing to set the exam themselves and they will decide the morning of the exam if they want to show up for it. lewis: right. gina: it's a plea doesn't go far

enough in terms of giving public assurance -- it simply doesn't go far enough in terms of giving public assurance for the things we need to have in place for the kinds of ai we are using today that is powering our banking systems, health care systems, our smartphones, and yes, our bbc player. lewis: ok, let's talk about specifics here. this idea of a digital watermark basically telling people this content is made by ai, it's ai-generated, how in practice does that work? is it effective? na: well, we will see a lot of synthetic media circulating in our information environments. that will be really telling during upcoming elections in the u.k., the u.s., and the ee, where certain cash in the eu -- u.k., u.s., and the eu, where certain comments can circulate by candidates there are orderly generated. we need to make sure we are not

devolving public trust in information from trusted sources because we have this in our system. that watermarking step is one way we can start the process. lewis: that would mean if we see a clip online of a politician saying something, we should look somewhere on the screen for some kind of identification to tell us whether it is real or not. gina: or that the companies who have agreed to voluntarily follow these principles are being willing to mark and denote media that is circulating that doesn't meet those verifiable standards. we have all seen the pope and the pop. if all a lot of people and we will have that kind of information that will circulate. it is when we have a gap between needing to know good, reliable information very quickly and needing to separate

out entertainment or humorous things from fact that we will have a real challenge. utter marking -- watermarking is one step, but it will not solve all of these problems. lewis: fascinating stuff wasn't . professor gina neff, thank you for coming on the program. if you would like to know how artificial intelligence works, there is a new podcast series that takes you back to the basics and demystifies the whole world of ai. search for "unrstand tech and ai" on bbc sounds. we will stay in the u.s. there is a date for donald trump's trial of alleged mishandling of classified documents. the trial will start in may of next year. let's go live to washington. our north american correspondent is there. what do we know? reporter: so the date is set for, may 20 next year, slap bang in the middle of the election

campaign season. the day puts the trial of the tail end of the republican party's primary process. it isuaranteed right now that donald trump is probably going to be the nominee. he's the clear frontrunner for the nomination. just to remind people what this trial is about, you mentioned the classified documents. he faces 37 counts of allegedly withholding classified documents relating to national security. he is charged alongside his aid with making false statements and conspiring to obstruct justice. he has pleaded not guilty to all the charges. just to give you his reaction, he says that the schedule is a setback for the department of justice, and of course they are the ones who brought the case forward, and he say the delay gives extensive time to fight what he describes as an empty hoax. because donald trump once the delay until after the presidential election, so this trial would happen six months

before americans start voting. he wanted to happen after that, because the department of justice basically can't prosecute a sitting president. his legal advisors have been blunt about that fact, that they want to kick this into the long grass and hope that it happens afterwards. as you know, there are lots of cases flying around donald trump. there is potentially an imminent indictment coming, a third one related to january 6. it is shaping to be pretty much a busy legal calendar for donald trump next year. lewis: you brought us some of the response there, but i wonder what kind of political commentators are saying about how this plays into the election cycle, what impact if any it will have, is it baked into the candidates' sides? nomia: constitutionally, what is extraordinary is this doesn't stop donald trump from running for the presidency. not at all.

there is very few qualifications you need to be president, or to run to be president. in terms of his chances, as far as donald trump is concerned, these sorts othings boost support for him, and we have seen evidence for that. what he tends to do, certainly with indictments, he gets ahead of the narrative financing that they are coming, uses them in his favor, and there is evidence that it works if you look at the polls of republican voters. they believe in his narrative that all of these cases flying around him are just part of this political witchhunt. i think the big question is will it matter to american voters generally speaking, because whilst he might have many republican voters on his side, heoes need other americans, independent voters, suburban women, for example, black americans, these really important voting blocs to get on board for him to win the presidency. whether they will look at this and think that this candidate is too much, there are too many

indictments, too many legal problems around him, he is not someone we would want to vote for, we don't know that yet. lewis: nomia, thanks so much for that. around the world and across the u.k., this is bbc news. we are going to take a quick look now at some headlines in the u.k. transport unions have called off next week and strikes on the london underground after last-minute talks. members from rmt and united were set to walk out for several days, june 23 and 28 of july, but union leaders said the transport for london made significant concessions on job cuts and pensions. government borrowed less than expected in june, helped by high tax receipts and a big drop in debt interest payments. that is 400 million pounds lower than last june, below productions by the government's independent forecaster. the office for national statistics says that borrowing

is still the third-highest for june on record. and members of a head teachers union and england have accepted a 6.5% pay rise for the teachers association of school and college leaders, ascl. it was one of four teaching unions considering strike action. you are live with bbc news. next, u.k. politics in the next on the inquiry into covid-19. technical experts have uncovered all relevant messages from boris johnson's old phone that he had been advised not to use on security grounds. and he will hand them over unredacted to the coronavirus inquiry. that is according to a spokesperson for the ex-prime minister. the spokesperson said that boris johnson is pleased that technical experts have successfully recovered all relevant messages from the device. as repeatedly stated, he will deliver this material in un

redacted form into the inquiry. the process requires that a security check is made by the cabinet office and the timing of any other progress is under the cabinet office's control, and it will alws be the case that boris johnson would pass the material to the inquiry and do anything possible to help the process approved by the inquiry followed to ensure that this was successful. let's go live to our political correspondent damian grammaticas. i read the statement in full. or almost in full. can you tell us what it all means? damian: the importance oall this is this was the phone that boris johnson had and was using from the very start of the pandemic, early 2020 all the way through the first roughly year and a half, may 2021. it was a period where the government was grappling with the origins of the pandemic, what to do at the start of it, and the first wave, then the

second wave, and even the third. three lockdowns this period covers. what the inquiry wants to see on that are the whatsapp messages sent between two dozen senior government figures. it was a group that could exchange messages and message each other individually. mr. johnson was prime minister and that included him, his chancellor, finance minister rishi sunak the health secretary at the time, senior health advisors, senior civil servants, and all of those messages will give insight into what was going on at the heart of government. this phone number, but johnson had it for years. when the fact came out and it was realized that the number had been public, the security advisors said to him in 2021 you have to put the phone aside, you can't use it. now they have been able to recover it and he says he will hand it over. there had been a separate legal challenge from the government but that got defeated. the importance is that this is going to be passed over an

insight into the crucial moments in the pandemic. lewis: damian, stay right there. i want to get your thoughts on a different u.k. politics story. conservative prime minister rishi sunak has had two big losses in three by elections in england. there were celebrations for labor in the north yorkshire seat, with the party overturning the majority by 20,000 votes. there was a bigger percentage swing for the liberal democrats in the southwest, overturning a 19,000 majority there. but the conservatives held onto boris johnson's rmer constituency in west london, winning by just 495 votes. damian, let's come back to you. your reaction to those results? where do you think it leaves the parties? damian: well, let's start with

the liberal democrats. what it is for them, they of course, traditionally the third party, this cements their position. they have now won 4 of these by elections -- bielections, four of them in the last couple of years. and that has included, like this one, very big swings to them. for them, this is a sign that they are back in business after having taking part in the coalition government with the conservatives back in 2010 and then really suffering from that at the polls. they see this is a big step forward. and they manage to do it in areas where they used to be strong -- a1 is in the southwest. it's a strong sign for them. the question is can they translate that into a general election in a year or so. for labor, a very good result similarly in north yorkshire.

a big swing to them in a seat that they have never controlled. they see that as a big sign that they can draw voters, too, but the question mark was on the edge of london, the seed that used to be boris johnso's, where they had a smaller challenge, or a smaller number of votes to overturn. they didn't do that, they just fell short. for labor, question marks about the strategy. they say it's a big win for them, but is it strong enough to cement their position going forward? for the conservatives, they didn't lose all three that is the positive for they did hold onto the seat that was formerly boris johnson's. conservative prime minister rishi sunak says that this is a sign that everything is in play for the next election, he is not going to change his strategy. but real questions for him because what we saw and the other elections is voters coalescing, voting tactically against the conservatives.

it really tells you a big picture that there is still huge electoral problems for the conservatives a year or so out from an election. lewis: damian, thanks very much for that. let's go to u.k. political editor. thank you for coming on the program. a t of time to soak in the three results. all the initial spin from all the party leaders in various political commentators owhat's good, what's bad, what beat expectation, what didn't. where do you think things stand now? >> i think the fact is that in private, mp's are telling quite different story to the one that they are projecting in public. in short, no one is terribly happy with this result except for the lib dems, who are very happy. but the result was not hugely unexpected, although perhaps the size of the swing was bigger

than expected. there were big question marks over what was going to happen in north yorkshire seat because it was such a large majority to overturn. the fact that labor has won that is definitely being taken as a good sign in the terms of looking at the sort of wider general election hopes for labor. that said, in uxbridge, because it was a much smaller majority to overturn, people -- labor mps are very unhappy. one person said they felt the campaign had been very timid, and they are concerned that there is not enough leadership and strong direction being shown, and this is the reason why they didn't take oxbridge. on the others, the conservative side, selby a huge loss. big questions about the leadership of rishi sunak and whether he can really do enough at this stage to turn things around. lewis: what does this mean

directly for the election coming up in crude, simple terms? is there anything we can learn or read that this means rishi sunak has a bigger chance that we realize or care starmer will be in number 10? >> i don't think either of those are things we can say at this stage. probably the main caveat is that all the indications are that labor is the likely victor of the general election. but there are increasing discussions about a labor minority government and possibly even a hung parliament. the resultant uxbridge is giving conservative mps a bit more about spring in their step. what they have seen from that is this issue around the ultra-low emission zone, which is a much-just like scheme that is being extended into -- ch disliked scheme that is being

extended into outer edge of london. the thing mp's are asking themselves is cannot be worked into a national issue, and national level, around the cost-of-living, and can they persuade people that labor would add money to your bills. you know, similarly, what lessons can be drawn from the selby win, people are saying there was low turnout there from conservative voters annoyed at the fact that the by election -- bi-election was being called at all and there are extraneous circumstances that would not be in play in a general election. it is difficult to say with any certainty what this means a year or so out from a general election where the whole country is going to the polls. lewis: it won't stop us asking, though. >> keeps us busy for next year. lewis: thank you so much for

coming on the program and talking us through what the political ramifications will be. big political story in spain happening now. we take you to these live pictures, because sunday election in spain. this is the last big campaign and the candidates are holding their closing rallies, as it were this is the opposition leader holding his last meeting. you may remember the socialist prime minister called a snap election after losses in the regional elections back in may. it took a lot of people by surprise, but he called that election straightaway and that is happening on sunday and it is pretty tight in that race. we will bring you those results on bbc news into next week. narrator: funding for this presentation of this program

is provided by... narrator: financial services firm, raymond james. narrator: funding was also provided by, the freeman foundation. and by judy and peter blum kovler foundation; pursuing solutions for america's neglected needs. ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ narrator: funding for this presentation of this program is provided by... woman: architect. bee keeper. mentor. a raymond james financial advisor tailors advice to help you live your life. life well planned. narrator: funding was also provided by, the freeman foundation. and by judy and peter blum kovler foundation; pursuing solutions for america's neglected needs. announcer: and now, "bbc news".