A bill to crack down on the creation of digital twins of real people by tech companies is to be debated in the House of Commons.
Initially proposed by Science, Innovation and Technology Committee chair Dame Chi Onwurah, the Personal Data (Digital Twin) Bill, also known as the ‘There Is Only One Me’ Bill, will be presented in the Commons on Wednesday 9 September.
Onwurah, Labour MP for Newcastle Central and West, said her proposals to crack down on personality capture and so-called artificial intelligence (AI) stealth-twinning has received backing from Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs, as well as Dame Caroline Dinenage, chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee.
“I am delighted that colleagues across the House are backing my Bill to ban tech companies from turning our constituents into an algorithm, without their permission,” said Onwurah.
“We know the tech companies collect data on everything we do, every click we make, every photo we like. But now that data is being combined with AI to turn you into an algorithm, to predict your behaviour, to target advertising at you, to persuade you to watch a particular video or believe some dodgy news report.
“Think about it. Who is best able to persuade you to do or say something if not an automated version of yourself?” she said. This Bill will establish the principle that there is only one me, for everyone.”
Currently, technology platforms use various methods – including AI chat bots – to construct models of people based on data points drawn from lists of friends and contacts on social media, ‘liked’ content, and purchasing and streaming histories, among other things.
Such models can be used in various ways, mostly for targeted advertising, but in some cases to predict an individual’s behaviour and even to groom extremist opinions in behaviours in ways outside their control.
Onwurah said such stealth-twinning not only violated the premise that people should be able to control their likeness, but contributes to other undesirable outcomes, such as the pseudo-humanisation of AI and the sycophantic nature of chatbots, as well as ultimately lining the pockets of unaccountable billionaires.
Stealth-twinning becomes even more concerning when children are involved, said Onwurah. “The automated versions of your kids will grow with them and in my committee I have heard some of the tragic consequences of online grooming by algorithms and chatbots – a girl fed more and more extreme dieting advice until she literally wasted away. My bill will expressly protect children from digital twinning,” she said.
‘Right to reset’
A report produced in 2025 by Onwurah’s Committee, Social media, misinformation and harmful algorithms, called for a right to reset the algorithms tech companies build as part of this twinning process but to date, this has not been forthcoming. The new bill goes one step further and seeks to force tech platforms to obtain permission before incorporating anybody’s preferences into an algorithm.
It will also seek to establish a principles-based definition of a digital twin covering any algorithms or models that include people’s preferences, which it is expected may carry additional implications for deepfakes and copyright exemptions.
