- The UK government is promoting the OpenAI partnership as part of its AI Action Plan
- The move brings data sovereignty to UK users for customer content
- Officials in the MoJ will also be given access to ChatGPT for businesses
The UK government has announced an agreement with OpenAI to expand the UK’s sovereign AI capabilities, providing more data security and safety for users.
From 24 October 2025 onwards, UK customers and developers will be able to store their data on UK servers, which will help comply with data protection laws – including GDPR, a much stricter set of requirements than its US counterparts.
This will be welcome news for many UK businesses, many of whom do not know where their data is stored. The lack of data sovereignty has been a cause of increasing concern, with many worried about the potential consequences of their data being stored in the US.
Stored in the region
The new ChatGPT workspace, provided with data residency, is set to store customer content in the selected region at rest. This includes files, image generation, conversations, code interpreter and data analysis, canvas, ChatGPT memory, and custom GPTs.
This still leaves some information that may be stored outside of the selected area, including but not limited to; workspace metadata, third-party services, connectors and MCP and transient or processing steps (required for service functionality).
Part of the government’s AI action plan, this latest deal also brings ChatGPT to Justice Department officials, bringing 2,500 employees to ChatGPT Enterprise.
“The number of people using our products in the UK has quadrupled in the past year,” noted Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO.
“It’s exciting to see them using AI to save time, increase productivity and get more done. Civil servants are using ChatGPT to improve public services and established businesses are reinventing operations. We’re proud to continue to support the UK and the government’s AI agenda.”
The government has already laid out sweeping plans to inject AI into the UK public sector, which, paired with £14bn of private sector investment, aims to bring the country to the top of the global AI market for both consumers and businesses.
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