Methodology

The archive records documents that establish, propose or explain how artificial intelligence is governed: national strategies, legislation and bills, regulations, official guidance, ethics and risk frameworks, standards, and international agreements. It also records directory entries for international organisations active in the field.

Commentary, opinion pieces and press coverage are out of scope. Where a news report is the only available record of a development, it is used to locate the underlying official document rather than cited in its place.

An item is included when it is issued or endorsed by a public authority, legislature, standards body or intergovernmental organisation, and when a durable public source can be cited. Voluntary codes are included where a public authority convened or endorsed them.

Each entry carries a short descriptive summary written from the document itself. The summary states what the instrument does and what it requires. It does not evaluate the instrument, compare jurisdictions, or predict outcomes.

Every record carries a jurisdiction, region, document type, status and publication year. Themes describe the governance questions the document addresses. Because instruments frequently address several questions at once, a document commonly appears under more than one topic.

Status describes the document's standing at the time of the last review: proposed, adopted, in force, published, superseded, or unknown where the record cannot be confirmed. Status is a property of the document, not a judgement about a country.

Entries link to the official source wherever one is publicly accessible — a government portal, official journal, parliamentary record or standards catalogue. Where an official source has moved or been withdrawn, the citation is retained so the document can still be identified.

Records are reviewed as new developments occur in the jurisdiction concerned. Each entry displays the date it was last updated. Superseded records are retained rather than deleted, because the history of an instrument is often as useful as its current text.

Coverage is uneven and reflects what is publicly available in accessible languages. Absence of a record does not mean absence of governance activity in that jurisdiction. Summaries are written in English from source texts that may be authoritative in another language; where meaning is contested, the official text prevails.

Corrections are welcome and are applied to the record rather than appended as commentary. See the about page for how the archive is maintained.