{"id":9564,"date":"2025-12-18T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cnti.org\/cnti-news\/\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T09:51:29","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T13:51:29","slug":"journalisms-new-frontier-an-analysis-of-global-ai-policy-proposals-and-their-impacts-on-journalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cnti.org\/reports\/journalisms-new-frontier-an-analysis-of-global-ai-policy-proposals-and-their-impacts-on-journalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Journalism\u2019s New Frontier: An Analysis of Global AI Policy Proposals and Their Impacts on Journalism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

AI is revolutionizing the news industry. In CNTI\u2019s 2024 survey of 430 journalists<\/a>, AI was top of mind for three-quarters of them, and nearly half said their organizations are not paying enough attention to how AI can help their work, harm their work or both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether newsrooms are paying enough attention or not, however, many governments are adopting<\/a> AI strategies, policies and laws. These regulatory attempts rarely directly address journalism and vary dramatically in their frameworks, enforcement capacity and level of international coordination, but they will almost certainly have an impact on journalism and the digital information environment. To understand exactly how regulation is, or could be, impacting journalism, we reviewed 188 national and regional AI strategies, laws and policies that collectively cover more than 99 countries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The analysis is structured around the seven regions of the world, as identified by the World Bank<\/a> \u2014 North America<\/a>, Latin America and the Caribbean<\/a>, Europe and Central Asia<\/a>, the Middle East and North Africa<\/a>, Sub-Saharan Africa<\/a>, East Asia and the Pacific<\/a>, and South Asia<\/a> \u2014 and around how regulatory activity in each of these regions addresses seven policy components that, based on the research of CNTI and others, are particularly relevant to and likely to impact journalism:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    How We Did This<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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    Our review includes documents put forward between January 2022 and June 2025. While regulations and strategies on AI existed prior to this period, they were excluded because they pre-date the widespread public release of generative AI systems, occasioned by ChatGPT\u2019s launch in November 2022, and therefore do not reflect subsequent policy shifts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    Selection of laws and policies<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

    Out of necessity, our sampling approach varied by region and by country. In North America, especially the U.S., there were too many bills to take a comprehensive approach. In this case, we selected AI legislation that represented a range of approaches, and prioritized regional\/state diversity rather than likelihood to pass, consistent with our goal of understanding the breadth of regulatory approaches. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In other regions, such as Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, and East Asia and the Pacific, we were able to compile a near-complete list of relevant documents from each individual country\u2019s legislative resources and review the majority of bills and strategies. For countries with more than 50 bills at the national level, such as Mexico, we prioritized comprehensive bills over those that sought to create committees or institutes, amend current laws or address highly specific issues. In all these cases, secondary sources (e.g., law firms, academic articles) were used to verify the status of various proposals in the legislative process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In Europe, we did not review individual strategies or laws for European Union member states since they automatically fall under the EU AI Act. EU candidate states are also required to pass legislation that aligns with the EU AI Act, so we noted when candidate states had separate strategies or policies in place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In cases where a country had a bill, strategy and\/or policy, we prioritized the legally-binding bill(s) over non-binding strategy documents. We did not count white papers or other government-sponsored research papers in the 188 documents we reviewed, but these papers were sometimes used to assess impacts on journalism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Wherever possible, we reviewed bills, strategies and proposals in their original language. In addition to English, our research team includes members proficient in Spanish, French and Portuguese. For many other languages, we used high-quality English translations provided by law firms, research groups or governments themselves. For some documents, especially those from East Asia, we used machine translation. In these cases, our understanding was supplemented and confirmed by secondary sources (which are cited wherever appropriate). All machine translated quotes in this report have been confirmed by a human translator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    We focused on documents that used the term \u201cartificial intelligence,\u201d but definitions were not always consistent across laws or policies, even within a single country. (Many policies we included also used additional AI-related terms like \u201cdeepfakes.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    As with all CNTI research, this report was prepared by the research and professional staff of CNTI. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/details>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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    Explore the proposals<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    CNTI reviewed 188 national and regional AI strategies, laws and policies around the world to determine how they impact journalism. We focused our analysis around how regulatory activity addresses seven policy components that are particularly likely to impact journalism. Use the below map to explore each of the policy documents we reviewed and to see what journalism-related topics they include. Use the column on the left to see which documents mention a specific topic, or click on a country to see the list of its documents and the topics covered in each. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/cnti-ai-legislation>\n\n\n