UK names Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri under its radio access law, with Alexa Plus and Gemini included

The British government has brought the voice assistants of Amazon, Google and Apple under rules meant to keep UK radio stations available on smart speakers, and it has written their generative AI successors into the same designations. The Radio Selection Services (Designation) Regulations 2026, made on November 10 and signed by Ian Murray as minister of state for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, were laid before Parliament on November 12 and come into force on January 1, 2027.

They designate three services by name: “Alexa” or “Alexa Plus,” provided by Amazon Media EU S.à r.l. of Luxembourg; “Google Assistant” or “Gemini,” provided by Google LLC; and “Siri,” provided by Apple Distribution International Limited of Ireland. A designation is not affected if a service changes its name.

What a designation requires

The powers come from the Media Act 2024, which added a Part 3B on radio selection services to the Communications Act 2003. Section 362BI sets the duties. A designated provider must take all reasonable steps to let users select an internet radio station on the statutory list by spoken command and make it play, and to keep that working while the station stays listed. It must also take all reasonable steps to make sure that nothing plays before the station except brief identifications and, if the station agrees, advertising, and that playback is not interrupted. A station can ask the provider to use a particular method, such as playing it through another online service. Those two requirements do not oblige a provider to override a user's own preferences, and the provider may not charge stations for any of it.

The government's case rests on changing habits. Its July consultation said 87% of the UK population tunes in to radio every week, and its response cites RAJAR figures showing that 18% of all radio listening is via a voice-assisted device. Ofcom's advice, in a report the Secretary of State received on March 19, 2026, proposed a threshold of 700,000 users; one consultation response said the threshold captures platforms accounting for 95% of UK users who listen to internet radio through such services.

The generative AI question

The consultation asked specifically whether generative AI-enabled versions of the assistants should fall under the same designations. It drew five responses. Three supported including Alexa+ with Alexa, and none objected. Three said Gemini's voice features work as a successor to Google Assistant, and two asked for Gemini to be named outright. The government agreed that Gemini is “the direct functional successor” to Google Assistant and amended the designation to say so.

Two respondents worried that the wording could sweep in general-purpose AI services; one gave developer APIs and coding environments as examples. The government's answer is that a designation is limited to the radio selection function, which section 362BA defines as letting users select and play internet radio services through spoken commands, and that the section 362BI duties cannot apply to anything else a provider offers. Ofcom must keep a public, up-to-date list of designated services and the names they go by.

Cars, and when the duties start

The rules follow the assistant into the car, the government says: using Siri through CarPlay, or the wake words “Alexa” or “Hey Google” on an infotainment system, stays in scope. Where carmakers build their own assistants on the same technology, such as BMW's Intelligent Personal Assistant, which a respondent said uses Amazon's Alexa Custom Assistant, the government expects the carmaker and the designated provider to make sure voluntarily that the assistant complies; if that does not happen, the Secretary of State can consider designating those services directly.

One step is still to come. The designations come into force on January 1, but the explanatory memorandum published with them says they will have no legal effect until the rest of the regime is commenced on April 6, 2027. By our reading of legislation.gov.uk, the duties themselves are not yet in force: its record shows that section 48 of the Media Act, which inserted Part 3B, took effect on August 23, 2024, except for sections 362BI, 362BJ and 362BN. The latest Media Act commencement regulations on the site, made in June 2026, deal mainly with listed events, the sporting and other events of national interest, and their table of earlier commencements still lists section 48 as only partly in force; we found no newer ones there on November 13. The memorandum adds that Ofcom is developing a code of practice on how designated services should comply. The government estimates the regulations' net cost to business at below £10 million a year.