Joe Biden is not expected to attend Rishi Sunak’s flagship AI conference in a major “embarrassment” for the British Prime Minister.
The US president is set to miss the global summit this autumn even though Mr Sunak has boasted how America and the UK are closely co-operating on regulating the tech.
Biden may be replaced with the US vice-president Kamala Harris at the event, which is set to be held on 1 and 2 November at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, renowned as the home of British codebreaking during the Second World War.
If Biden doesn’t turn up, Whitehall sources say the decision will be seen as a blow to the Tory leader.
Labour warned Mr Sunak “risks embarrassment on the world stage” by mounting the conference without Mr Biden, and said the summit “looks to fall at before it’s even begun”.
While with Mr Biden in June, Mr Sunak said the pair were aligned in wanting to discuss potential “guardrails” about AI with other nations.
But The Daily Telegraph has said the US leader is not expected to make it to the conference.
Other attendees have not yet been confirmed, with uncertainty over how China will be represented at the event.
But the Telegraph says it is understood that all the other G7 leaders, including French president Emmanuel Macron and Canada’s leader Justin Trudeau will be invited.
It is also not known whether tech entrepreneurs such as Mark Zuckerberg, head of Meta, or Elon Musk, who owns X, will be on the list.
Downing Street has said that the summit will bring together a number of key countries, leading tech firms and researchers.
