The stealth-twinning of individuals means you can be exploited, groomed, targeted and mis-sold – by a digital version of yourself. My 10 Minute Rule Bill coming to Parliament in September, will ban tech companies from turning you into an algorithm.
Press Release
Dame Chi Onwurah MP brings to Parliament a ground-breaking bill to protect people from AI stealth-twinning and personality capture
STARTS
Dame Chi Onwurah, MP for Newcastle Central and West, and Chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee is bringing a Bill to crack down on tech companies turning you into an algorithm.
The Ten Minute Rule Bill, entitled, Personal Data (Digital Twin), will outlaw digital twins of people without the express permission of the individual concerned.
Tech platforms and AI chat bots make models of individuals based on hundreds or thousands or millions of data points from friends to content likes to purchases to streaming preferences.
These “digital twins” are then used to predict our behaviour, to target advertising and, in some cases, to groom extreme behaviours in ways outside of our control. This stealth twinning violates the premise that a person should have control over their likeness, and enables vast revenue streams, the pseudo humanisation of AI and the sycophantic nature of chatbots amongst other harms.
In the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee Report Social media, misinformation and harmful algorithms, last year the Committee called, amongst other things, for a right to reset algorithms. Unfortunately, this has not been forthcoming. This Bill goes one step further in requiring platforms to have express permission before turning a person’s preferences into an algorithm.
In his recent AI Encyclical Pope Leo 14th called for the safeguarding of personhood to recognise the uniqueness of humans and avoid the over concentration of power. A small number of platforms now have models of billions of human beings. If they were holding vast paper files on us we would accuse them of Stalin-like surveillance.
The Bill will include a principles based definition of a digital twin which covers any algorithms or models which includes people’s preferences. It is expected that this would also have implications for AI deepfakes and copyright exemptions.
Chi Onwurah said:
“ The stealth-twinning of individuals means you can be exploited, groomed, targeted and mis-sold – by a digital version of yourself. AI models are bringing incredible benefits from cancer diagnosis to weather mapping. But given no one has the right to impersonate you for gain, impersonating a person’s preferences to reap revenues or achieve social and political goals should not be legal. This Bill will establish the principle that there is only one me, for everyone.”
ENDS
Notes to editors
Dame Chi Onwurah’s Ten Minute Rule Bill, due to be debated on Wednesday 9th September, can be found on the parliament website, https://whatson.parliament.uk/event/cal56204.
The Science, Innovation and Technology Committee’s report, Social media, misinformation and harmful algorithm, was published on 11th July 2025. The link to the full report can be found on the committee’s website, https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/48745/documents/258221/default/
His Holiness Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical entitled, ‘Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.’ The link to the full document can be found on The Vatican’s website, https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html
Further press enquiries should be sent to Dominic Lynch dominic.lynch@parliament.uk