British shoppers turn to AI as London high street sales falter As our beloved high streets grapple with rising business costs, decaying consumer confidence and yet another bout of tax uncertainty, AI agents are reshaping how consumers shop. A report published by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) warns that that so-called ‘agentic AI’, a quasi-autonomous form of artificial intelligence, could shift from novelty to norm within [...]
Who still gets hired in the 2026 workplace? Business Britain’s labour market has probably never felt more precarious than it does now, as the struggling economy and the rapid rise of AI take effect. Redundancies are at their highest since the pandemic, unemployment has risen to 5.1 per cent, and entry-level opportunities, the traditional stepping stones for grads and young workers, have all but [...]
AI to answer your 101 calls, leaving 999 calls to humans “It’s not unusual for us to see 5,000 calls in 24 hours,” chief superintendent of the Thames Valley police department, Simon Dodds, told City AM. “Prioritising 999 over everything else is a real challenge”. That pressure has pushed his department, as well as the Hampshire & Isle of White Constabulary, to use AI agents. Their new [...]
Britain has 18 months to pick a lane, or lose the lead in AI October 17, 2025 US–UK momentum and fresh American capital give Britain a another shot at establishing AI leadership. The job now is execution: choose a stack lane, make services AI-first, attract global talent, and move faster safely, says Puneet Jindal The UK has a rare chance to turn new investment into real AI leadership – not through glossy [...]
The five fintech segments to watch August 18, 2025 Global fintech funding slumped to its worst half-year in five years in the first six months of 2025. Investment reached $44bn (£32.47bn), falling from $54.2bn the year prior, whilst the number of deals fell from 2,376 to 2,216. Weak investment in the three months to June 31 2025, hurt the headline figures, with just $18.7bn [...]
UK workers feel uncomfortable being managed by AI August 12, 2025 Less than a third of UK workers are comfortable being managed by an AI Agent, according to new research shared exclusively with City AM. New research from Workday found that more than three-quarters of UK organisations are moving to implement AI Agents in everyday management functions, with 40 per cent actively rolling out AI agents, 25 [...]
Chatbots are growing fast – but search still rules the web July 24, 2025 While chatbots like ChatGPT are seeing explosive growth, they are still a long way from overtaking traditional search engines – and Google remains firmly control of how people find information online. A recent report found that between April 2024 and March 2025, visits to AI chatbots surged by nearly 81 per cent year on year, [...]
Firms eye $450bn agentic AI prize, but trust is tanking July 16, 2025 Companies are eyeing a projected $450bn (£336bn) economic windfall from agentic AI by 2028, but few are adequately equipped to get there. New research from Capgemini found that the overwhelming majority of business leaders – 93 per cent – believe that scaling AI agents in the next 12 months will deliver a competitive ege. Yet [...]
Agentic AI set to transform tech roles, McKinsey warns June 13, 2025 Agentic AI is poised to shift software engineering from manual coding to high-level orchestration, which is set to transform tech roles according to a McKinsey executive. Speaking at Viva Tech Paris on Thursday, Stéphane Bout, the firm’s France leader and senior partner at QuantumBlack, AI – McKinsey’s data and analytics branch – said the software industry is [...]
AI funding: Dawn Capital backs ex-Google team’s customer service startup June 2, 2025 Danish startup deepdots, founded by former Google engineers, has raised a €5.5m seed round led by Dawn Capital, as companies across industries accelerate investment in artificial intelligence (AI) tools to overhaul customer service operations. The company, which builds AI models to automate the collection and analysis of customer feedback, claims to enable enterprise clients to [...]