TORUS
Hello Mate, this week we’re cutting through the noise and focusing on what actually moves creators forward.
Today’s AI story is not about hype. It is about power, control, and where the technology is being built into real systems. From London’s streets to Scotland’s data centres and Apple’s developer tools, the UK angle is getting sharper by the day.
Let’s dive in.
Today’s AI Signal
London mayor halts Metropolitan Police's £50m Palantir AI deal
London mayor Sadiq Khan has blocked the Metropolitan Police from signing a £50 million contract with Palantir, the controversial US surveillance firm, for AI tools to support criminal investigations.
The Met had argued Palantir was the only company able to supply what it needed, but the mayor stepped in following widespread concern from civil liberties groups about handing highly sensitive police data to a firm with known links to US immigration enforcement and the Israeli military.
For UK founders and public sector operators, this is the clearest signal yet that AI procurement decisions are now a political risk, not just a technical or commercial one, especially where biometric or criminal data is involved. Read more
Scotland's "green data centre" policy is masking real AI emissions
An analysis by charity Action to Protect Rural Scotland, covered by The Guardian, shows Scotland's national policy for encouraging "green data centres" was written in 2022, before the release of ChatGPT, and has no working definition of what "green" actually means.
As a result, over a dozen data centres in Scotland, including an AI Growth Zone near Glasgow backed by £8.2 billion in private funding, could label themselves green while the combined electricity demand of these projects is projected at around 6.2 gigawatts, roughly one and a half times Scotland's entire peak winter usage.
This matters for UK businesses making sustainability claims tied to Scottish cloud or compute infrastructure, and for investors in UK AI infrastructure who have assumed "green" carries real meaning.
Apple adds Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's Codex directly into Xcode
Apple is integrating both Anthropic's Claude Agent and OpenAI's Codex as first-class coding tools inside Xcode, its developer environment used by hundreds of thousands of app builders worldwide.
Developers will be able to call on either AI to write and edit code, update project settings, and handle tasks inside the same tool they already use to ship iOS, macOS, and other Apple platform apps.
For UK development teams and agencies building on Apple platforms, this reduces the need for third-party AI coding tools and brings AI-assisted development into the standard workflow at no extra cost.
Global AI headlines
TODAY’S LESSON
AI Tool of the Day
AI tool for UK SMBs: Otter.ai for meetings
Many small UK businesses run on meetings, whether with clients, suppliers, or their own team, but rarely capture what was agreed, who owns what, or what was decided.
What it does
Otter.ai joins your video call or records in-person meetings and produces a live transcript, an AI-generated summary, and a list of action items, all within a few minutes of the meeting ending.
One concrete workflow for a UK small business
Before a client call, tell the team you will be using Otter so everyone is aware.
During the call, Otter runs in the background and transcribes everything live.
After the call, copy the AI summary and action items into your follow-up email to the client.
You now have a timestamped record of what was agreed, without anyone spending 20 minutes writing notes.
This works especially well for agencies, consultants, accountants, and any service business that bills by the hour and needs clear records.
Pricing
Otter offers a free tier with limited monthly minutes. Paid plans start at around £14 per user per month and include longer recordings, more AI summaries, and integrations with Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams.
Read more → https://otter.ai
UK AI tools and offers
Tool: Microsoft 365 Copilot for Small Business
If your UK SMB already uses Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Business Premium, you can add Copilot for £13.80 per user per month (paid yearly) to get AI across Outlook, Word, Excel, and Teams. One simple workflow: after a client call in Teams, ask Copilot to summarise the discussion, pull out action items, and draft a follow-up email. You edit it once and send. Read more
UK AI Job Opportunities
Robert Half (for fintech client) – AI Engineer (contract, hybrid, London) – build and deploy ML models in cloud-native environment; 6-month initial contract.
Apply → https://www.roberthalf.com/gb/en/jobs/london-london/ai-engineerStructureFlow (legal tech scale-up) – Senior AI Engineer, £79K–£106K per year (London, flexible hours) – join engineering team building AI tools for Magic Circle law firms and US AMLAW 200.
Apply → https://www.totaljobs.com/jobs/artificial-intelligence/in-londonPA Consulting – Senior AI Engineer (London, hybrid, 2 days/week in office) – experiment with generative AI frameworks like LangChain, LlamaIndex, Hugging Face, and advise clients on what scales.
Apply → https://uk.jooble.org/jobs-ai-engineer/LondonMorgan Hunt (public sector) – SC Cleared AI Engineer, £700/day (contract until March 2026) – two separate roles, one focused on Azure AI Foundry, one on Copilot Studio.
Apply → https://uk.jooble.org/jobs-ai-engineer/LondonIBM Consulting UK – Data Scientist, AI & Advanced Analytics, London – build and deliver AI and analytics projects for public and private sector clients using open cloud tooling.
Apply → https://www.jobijoba.co.uk/detail/92/e0b38a354ab4a48e46debebf5f30611f
Stay in the loop - TORUS tracks UK and European AI so you do not have to.
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