Meta and the UK Government have launched a £1 million ‘Open Source AI Fellowship’ designed to embed some of the country’s brightest AI experts into Whitehall.
Backed by Meta’s grant to the Alan Turing Institute, the initiative will see AI specialists placed across government departments to build advanced tools that improve agility and deliver on the Plan for Change.
Dr Jean Innes, CEO of the Alan Turing Institute, said: “Open-source technologies have great potential to help government increase productivity, support decision-making, and deliver better public services. These fellowships will offer an innovative way to match AI experts with the real world challenges our public services are facing.”
Fellows will work with open source models – including Meta’s Llama models – to tackle high-security challenges such as live language translation for national security operations and the analysis of construction planning data to speed up approvals and accelerate home building.
The pair will also expand ‘Humphrey’, the AI suite already assisting civil servants by summarising lengthy documents, taking notes in meetings and collating consultation responses. By removing administrative burdens, Humphrey has already shown how open-source technology can boost productivity and free staff to focus on policy and delivery.
Meta’s Chief Global Affairs Officer, Joel Kaplan, has described the Fellowship as a way to “bring innovation and technical expertise from the private sector and elsewhere into government to solve problems, bring new thinking, and challenge civil service orthodoxy”.
Kaplan added that the focus on open-source AI is “crucial for the UK to establish its sovereign AI capacity and be, in the words of the Prime Minister, an ‘AI maker not an AI taker.’”
Anything built through the programme using open-source models will be government-owned. Sensitive datasets remain within official control, models can be freely adapted to exact needs, and there is no lock-in with external vendors. All use cases will be published openly, enabling wider public benefit.
A recent report by Meta and the Social Market Foundation argues that treating open-source AI as a genuine option in digital projects can deliver greater value for taxpayers, stronger security auditing, and enhanced strategic autonomy.
This announcement follows the Prime Minister’s insistence that no one in government should be doing anything that AI can do better and more cheaply. Technology Secretary Peter Kyle commented that “this Fellowship is the best of AI in action – open, practical, and built for public good. It is about delivery, not just ideas – creating real tools that help government work better for people.”
Kyle pointed to ‘Caddy’, the AI assistant co-developed with Citizens Advice, which has halved response times on up to a thousand calls and doubled advisors’ confidence in their replies.
The Fellowship will run for twelve months, beginning in January 2026, with applications opening shortly.
Fellows are expected to help unlock up to £45 billion in productivity gains across the public sector by developing open-source AI tools in areas such as national security, public health, and planning reform. They will join DSIT’s Incubator for AI – the team behind Humphrey – to translate experimental ideas into operational systems that deliver immediate and measurable benefits for citizens.
In parallel with the Fellowship, the government has open-sourced Caddy so that call centres worldwide can adopt the technology to support debt advice, legal guidance, and consumer rights assistance. The Cabinet Office is now using Caddy to provide grant-making teams with rapid access to expert guidance, improving decision-making speed and consistency while securing better value for money.
Today also sees the launch of the next phase of the AI Knowledge Hub. This platform shares real case studies, tools, and tips to help teams implement AI responsibly, avoid duplicate efforts, and move from small pilots to substantial results. New features include a Prompt Library to guide departments in using AI to enhance everyday productivity and deliver faster and more reliable services.
By combining open-source expertise with hands-on collaboration, the Open Source AI Fellowship backed by Meta – and its associated initiatives – will help to support the UK’s ambition to use the technology to transform public service delivery.
(Image credit: Meta)
See also: Meta slams ‘incorrect and unlawful’ EU DMA ruling
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