The UK Government has partnered with frontier AI firm Anthropic to create AI assistants designed to help people find work and get career advice, part of Labour’s wider effort to overhaul public services and fuel growth with cutting‑edge tech.

The collaboration between Anthropic and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) will see a dedicated AI assistant powered by the Claude chatbot piloted for GOV.UK employment services to provide tailored support for job seekers.

Building on an MOU signed with DSIT last year, Anthropic said the partnership will embed its AI safety experts inside government teams, supporting civil servants and developers so that the government can eventually maintain the system independently.

The new AI assistant will initially focus on supporting job seekers entering or re-entering the workforce, providing personalised career advice, access to training, and intelligently routing people to the right services based on circumstances.

Anthropic said the tool will also maintain context across interactions, a key feature of AI assistants like Claue, with users promised full control over their data, including what the bot remembers, and the ability to opt out at any time.

“We’re excited to partner with the UK government to help deliver on the AI Opportunities Action Plan,” said Pip White, head of UK, Ireland and Northern Europe at Anthropic. 

“This partnership with the UK government is central to our mission. It demonstrates how frontier AI can be deployed safely for the public benefit, setting the standard for how governments integrate AI into the services their citizens depend on.”

Taking this next step in its agreement with Anthropic further deepens the UK government’s ties to major US tech firms under its “rewiring Whitehall” agenda.

Last year, the government inked deals with Google Cloud to modernise legacy IT across vast swathes of public sector infrastructure, including the NHS, and entered into an extensive AI training programme and cybersecurity review for UK educational institutions with AWS.

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That’s not to mention the near £9 billion earmarked over five years for Microsoft licenses across central government departments, the NHS, local councils, and emergency services.

However, while the government has celebrated these deals as evidence of growth and the UK’s place at the forefront of AI, debates concerning digital sovereignty are intensifying.

Most recently, the Open Rights Group urged UK lawmakers to curb the state’s “overreliance” on US tech firms, arguing that relying on one country to supply the bulk of our digital infrastructure is leaving the country vulnerable to foreign powers at a geopolitically unstable time.