Regulation
AI and UK data protection: what the ICO expects
The ICO's AI guidance sets out how data protection law applies to AI systems that process personal data. It is about preventing harm before a breach as well as responding after one.
Last reviewed against legislation.gov.uk, National Cyber Security Centre and OWASP GenAI Security Project. Sources
The guidance
What the ICO updated
The ICO published updates to its AI and data protection guidance on 15 March 2023 [9]. A law firm's summary lists four areas of change: accountability, transparency, lawfulness and fairness [9]. The ICO also developed an AI and data protection risk toolkit to help organisations compare their design and development processes with its expectations [9].
Key points
As summarised
Impact assessments
The summary says a data protection impact assessment should consider whether using an AI system is more or less risky than alternatives and explain why a less risky option was rejected [9].
Transparency
Individuals must receive privacy information before their data is used to train or apply an AI model, if collected directly [9].
Lawfulness
Fairness
The guidance stresses processing people would reasonably expect and avoiding unjustified adverse effects [9].
Link to breaches
Why the guidance matters
A breach involving AI is still judged under the same breach rule: notify within 72 hours of becoming aware unless it is unlikely to result in a risk [1]. If inferences or outputs count as personal data, they count in that assessment too [9]. That means a leaked set of AI outputs about named customers needs the same reportability check as a leaked customer list.
Read the ICO's own pages
This page relies on a law firm's summary of the 2023 update. Check the ICO's current guidance for the full text and any later changes.
Next
Turn guidance into action
Include the AI tools you use in your impact assessment process, and keep the output with your breach record. The AI use policy guide covers the staff side.
Keep reading
Read next
AI use policy
How to write a short AI use policy that stops sensitive data going into AI tools, using OWASP, NCSC and IBM findings as the basis.
Read the guide
Questions
Sourced answers on what counts as an AI data breach, the 72 hour reporting rule, shadow AI, exposed databases and what UK organisations should do.
Read the guide
What to do
Practical steps for UK organisations: find AI use, restrict data, prepare breach response and brief staff, each tied to NCSC, OWASP and UK GDPR sources.
Read the guideHow CyPro can help
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