Dr Luke McDonagh’s work cited in UK Parliamentary debate on AI and Digital Twins
On the 9th of September 2026, Dame Chi Onwurah, a Labour Party MP, introduced a new piece of draft legislation, the Personal Data (Digital Twins) Bill, a Private Members’ Bill introduced in the House of Commons under the Ten Minute Rule. Dame Chi Onwurah is proposing the Bill on the basis that while AI models bring benefits from drug discovery to weather mapping, no firm should have the right to impersonate an individual person for commercial gain. The Bill seeks to establish a principle that explicit consent must be sought from an individual for the creation of an algorithmic ‘digital twin’, including mining behavioural patterns and creating AI replicas that mimic the visual characteristics and voice of a person. The Bill will move to a second reading in November 2026. Dr Luke McDonagh has been advising Dame Onwurah on intellectual property law and digital replicas, and his advisory work was referenced in the debate:
“I place on the record my thanks to the organisations and individuals from across academia and civil society who have contributed to ensuring that the Bill would protect as many people as possible. I am delighted to have the support of Equity, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, 5rights, the Online Safety Network, Professor Ghislaine Boddington from the University of Greenwich and Professor Luke McDonagh from the London School of Economics Law School, among many others. I was also influenced by His Holiness Pope Leo’s recent encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas”. He chose protecting the uniqueness of real people from AI impersonation as the subject of his first letter to Catholics around the world. The Pope also highlighted how the billions of online digital twins constitute an unprecedented concentration of power in the hands of a small number of men.”
The full Parliamentary discussion can be found in Hansard here - https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2026-09-09/debates/B4E6B484-80CC-4063-8C02-3F90E06C1D33/PersonalData(DigitalTwins)
Dr Luke McDonagh has written on the topic of AI and digital replicas here - https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/should-we-introduce-a-new-right-against-ai-replicas/