06 Oct 2025
by Tess Buckley, Rory Daniels

Ethics in Action: Applying UK AI Ethics Principles to Immersive Environments Report


techUK is excited to announce the publication of our latest report, ‘Ethics in Action: Applying UK AI Ethics Principles to Immersive Environments’. 

Ethics in Action October 2025 front cover only.jpg

In the evolving landscape of emerging technologies, the UK Government’s AI White Paper approach provides a foundation for responsible innovation that can be extended beyond traditional AI systems.

There are five ethical principles underpinning this White Paper:

Safety, security and robustness | Appropriate transparency and explainability | Fairness | Accountability and governance | Contestability and redress.

These serve as a clear framework for what responsible technology development should achieve across diverse technical architectures, albeit operationalised in different ways.


This paper explores how these principles can be effectively applied to immersive environments, including those enabled by extended reality (XR) technologies, through the application of AI assurance techniques and standards.

The development of a common ethical framework such as this, which is tech agnostic, supports consistent oversight across systems for organisations, many of which will have diverse technical architectures. This reduces the need to formulate distinct ethical principles for each modality and is particularly helpful in an environment of accelerating technology convergence. The immersive environments of the future will often exist at this convergence, for example with advances in device hardware such as high-quality augmented reality displays and lightweight haptics providing more authentic and engaging ways to experience AI-driven virtual content in real-world settings.  

The five principles outline the ethical outcomes that immersive systems could seek fulfil, while assurance techniques and standards offer concrete methods for demonstrating the extent to which a system has achieved these results in practice. This paper offers practical insights and examples of industry best practices and real-world scenarios, all of which have been provided to the authors by techUK member companies.

This paper offers practical insights and examples of industry best practices and real-world scenarios, all of which have been provided to the authors by techUK member companies. These demonstrate the successful fulfilment of each principle in immersive contexts and illustrate how organisations might approach implementing these principles for extended reality and related technologies.  

The paper is structured around the five principles of the UK AI White Paper. Each chapter is dedicated to one of the principles, and in each case we provide: 

  • An explanation of the principle and its specific implications for immersive environments;  
  • An overview of relevant tools and strategies for implementation, including specific AI assurance techniques and standards applicable to immersive technologies;  
  • Real-world case studies demonstrating how techUK member companies are currently applying these principles in immersive contexts.  

The paper concludes with a summary table mapping all the tools available to companies to achieve each principle in practice, offering a quick reference guide for organisations seeking to implement ethical practices in immersive environment development. 


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Meet the team 

Sue Daley OBE

Sue Daley OBE

Director, Technology and Innovation

Laura Foster

Laura Foster

Associate Director - Technology and Innovation, techUK

Kir Nuthi

Kir Nuthi

Head of AI and Data, techUK

Rory Daniels

Rory Daniels

Head of Emerging Technology and Innovation, techUK

Tess Buckley

Tess Buckley

Programme Manager - Digital Ethics and AI Safety, techUK

Usman Ikhlaq

Usman Ikhlaq

Programme Manager - Artificial Intelligence, techUK

Chris Hazell

Chris Hazell

Programme Manager - Cloud, Tech and Innovation, techUK

Elis Thomas

Elis Thomas

Programme Manager, Tech and Innovation, techUK

Ella Shuter

Ella Shuter

Junior Programme Manager, Emerging Technologies, techUK

Harriet Allen

Harriet Allen

Programme Assistant, Technology and Innovation, techUK

 

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Authors

Tess Buckley

Tess Buckley

Programme Manager, Digital Ethics and AI Safety, techUK

Tess is the Programme Manager for Digital Ethics and AI Safety at techUK.  

Prior to techUK Tess worked as an AI Ethics Analyst, which revolved around the first dataset on Corporate Digital Responsibility (CDR), and then later the development of a large language model focused on answering ESG questions for Chief Sustainability Officers. Alongside other responsibilities, she distributed the dataset on CDR to investors who wanted to further understand the digital risks of their portfolio, she drew narratives and patterns from the data, and collaborate with leading institutes to support academics in AI ethics. She has authored articles for outlets such as ESG Investor, Montreal AI Ethics Institute, The FinTech Times, and Finance Digest. Covered topics like CDR, AI ethics, and tech governance, leveraging company insights to contribute valuable industry perspectives. Tess is Vice Chair of the YNG Technology Group at YPO, an AI Literacy Advisor at Humans for AI, a Trustworthy AI Researcher at Z-Inspection Trustworthy AI Labs and an Ambassador for AboutFace. 

Tess holds a MA in Philosophy and AI from Northeastern University London, where she specialised in biotechnologies and ableism, following a BA from McGill University where she joint-majored in International Development and Philosophy, minoring in communications. Tess’s primary research interests include AI literacy, AI music systems, the impact of AI on disability rights and the portrayal of AI in media (narratives). In particular, Tess seeks to operationalise AI ethics and use philosophical principles to make emerging technologies explainable, and ethical. 

Outside of work Tess enjoys kickboxing, ballet, crochet and jazz music.

Email:
[email protected]

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Rory Daniels

Rory Daniels

Senior Programme Manager, Emerging Technologies, techUK

Rory joined techUK in June 2023 after three years in the Civil Service on its Fast Stream leadership development programme.

During this time, Rory worked on the Government's response to Covid-19 (NHS Test & Trace), school funding strategy (Department for Education) and international climate and nature policy (Cabinet Office). He also tackled the social care crisis whilst on secondment to techUK's Health and Social Care programme in 2022.

Before this, Rory worked in the House of Commons and House of Lords alongside completing degrees in Political Economy and Global Politics.

Today, Rory leads techUK's emerging technologies activity across everything from immersive, web3, AI and robotics to space, gaming & metaverse.

This involves co-running techUK's flagship Innovation campaign, managing four series (including the 'Meet the Innovators' interview series), and launching 4-6-month 'sprint campaigns' on transformative technologies and sectors.

Email:
[email protected]
Website:
www.techuk.org/
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rorydaniels28/

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