By Digital Rights – News from Latin America and the Caribbean (NODAL)
AI regulation in Latin America: corporate pressure and criminal responses threaten human rights.
A new report on Digital Rights analyzes legislative processes in Brazil, Colombia, and Peru and warns that, while comprehensive regulatory proposals are stalled by Big Tech lobbying and geopolitical tensions, fragmented laws are advancing that leave out key impacts such as disinformation, gender violence, and the ecological footprint.
The debate on the regulation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Latin America is at a critical juncture. While governments in the region seek to position themselves on the global technological map and attract investment, the regulatory discussion is increasingly influenced by economic interests, US trade pressures, and intense lobbying by large technology companies, weakening the scope of human rights protection frameworks.
In this context, Derechos Digitales published "Where is AI regulation headed in the region?", a study examining recent legislative trends in Brazil, Colombia, and Peru. The research identifies how regulatory agendas are shaping up in the region, which issues are gaining traction, and which are being sidelined due to the urgency of attracting investment or implementing primarily criminal-based responses.
The analysis reveals a marked trend toward reactive and fragmented regulations. In Brazil, the region's most ambitious bill—establishing risk-level classifications, transparency for Big Tech companies, and rights against automated decisions—was approved by the Senate in 2024 but remains stalled in the Chamber of Deputies. In Colombia, of at least ten initiatives discussed in the legislature in 2024 and 2025, nine were shelved, and only Law 2502 of 2025, focused on criminalizing identity theft, progressed. Meanwhile, Peru approved Law 31814 (regulated in 2025), a pioneering but abstract framework focused on technological promotion, complemented by reforms that add the use of AI as an aggravating factor in crimes such as defamation or child sexual abuse.
The research highlights profound gaps that remain outside the public discourse: the lack of preventative measures and due diligence for platforms regarding technology-facilitated gender-based violence, the impact of generative AI on data integrity beyond election periods, and the sector's environmental footprint. This last point is particularly critical, as the relaxation of environmental transparency requirements coincides with a dramatic increase in water and energy consumption by data centers being established in the region.
“AI regulation in Latin America is once again trapped in the false dilemma between innovation and regulation. We are seeing a growing trend toward deregulation in environmental and data protection matters, as well as the preservation of corporate interests focused on maintaining the status quo of self-regulation. These trends require regional counterweights. It is urgent to revive the discussion and demand regulatory frameworks with a rights perspective, designed from and for Latin America,” stated Lucía Camacho, Coordinator of Public Policies on Digital Rights.
The report concludes that piecemeal legislation does not replace the need for comprehensive regulations with effective oversight. Given the context of geopolitical alignments and trade pressures, Derechos Digitales calls on Latin American states to prioritize due diligence, algorithmic transparency, and the guarantee of fundamental rights in the development and implementation of AI systems.
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