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Cumulative AI-related bills passed into law since 2016, as of 2025

See all data and research on:
Artificial Intelligence

What you should know about this indicator

  • AI-related laws are identified through automated searches of legislative websites, combined with AI-based analysis of legal texts and manual checks.
  • The system searches for terms such as “artificial intelligence” and “machine learning” to identify relevant laws.
  • Each law is counted once, even if it includes several AI-related provisions. This means the total may underestimate the extent of policymaking.
  • Only laws that have been enacted are included. Proposed or pending legislation is not counted.
  • The number of laws does not capture their importance: one broad law can be more impactful than many narrower ones.
Cumulative AI-related bills passed into law since 2016, as of 2025
The total number of AI-related laws enacted in Group of Twenty (G20) countries between 2016 and 2025.
Source
Digital Policy Alert via AI Index Report (2026) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
April 20, 2026
Next expected update
April 2027
Date range
2024–2024
Unit
bills

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

AI Index Report

The AI Index Report tracks, collates, distills, and visualizes data related to artificial intelligence (AI). The mission is to provide unbiased, rigorously vetted, broadly sourced data to enable policymakers, researchers, executives, journalists, and the general public to develop a more thorough and nuanced understanding of the complex field of AI.

Retrieved on
April 20, 2026
Retrieved from
https://hai.stanford.edu/assets/files/ai_index_report_2026.pdf
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Sha Sajadieh, Loredana Fattorini, Raymond Perrault, Yolanda Gil, Vanessa Parli, Lapo Santarlasci, Juan Pava, Nestor Maslej, Russ Altman, Erik Brynjolfsson, Carla Brodley, Jack Clark, Virginia Dignum, Vipin Kumar, James Landay, Terah Lyons, James Manyika, Juan Carlos Niebles, Yoav Shoham, Elham Tabassi, Russell Wald, Toby Walsh, Dan Weld. “The AI Index 2026 Annual Report,” AI Index Steering Committee, Institute for Human-Centered AI, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, April 2026.

The AI Index Report tracks, collates, distills, and visualizes data related to artificial intelligence (AI). The mission is to provide unbiased, rigorously vetted, broadly sourced data to enable policymakers, researchers, executives, journalists, and the general public to develop a more thorough and nuanced understanding of the complex field of AI.

Retrieved on
April 20, 2026
Retrieved from
https://hai.stanford.edu/assets/files/ai_index_report_2026.pdf
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Sha Sajadieh, Loredana Fattorini, Raymond Perrault, Yolanda Gil, Vanessa Parli, Lapo Santarlasci, Juan Pava, Nestor Maslej, Russ Altman, Erik Brynjolfsson, Carla Brodley, Jack Clark, Virginia Dignum, Vipin Kumar, James Landay, Terah Lyons, James Manyika, Juan Carlos Niebles, Yoav Shoham, Elham Tabassi, Russell Wald, Toby Walsh, Dan Weld. “The AI Index 2026 Annual Report,” AI Index Steering Committee, Institute for Human-Centered AI, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, April 2026.

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Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Cumulative AI-related bills passed into law since 2016, as of 2025”, part of the following publication: Charlie Giattino, Edouard Mathieu, Veronika Samborska, and Max Roser (2023) - “Artificial Intelligence”. Data adapted from AI Index Report. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260424-104218/grapher/cumulative-number-artificial-intelligence-bills-passed.html [online resource] (archived on April 24, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Digital Policy Alert via AI Index Report (2026) – with minor processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

Digital Policy Alert via AI Index Report (2026) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Cumulative AI-related bills passed into law since 2016, as of 2025” [dataset]. AI Index Report, “AI Index Report” [original data]. Retrieved April 27, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260424-104218/grapher/cumulative-number-artificial-intelligence-bills-passed.html (archived on April 24, 2026).

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Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-number-artificial-intelligence-bills-passed.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false
Metadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-number-artificial-intelligence-bills-passed.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false

Code examples

Examples of how to load this data into different data analysis tools.

Excel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-number-artificial-intelligence-bills-passed.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests

# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-number-artificial-intelligence-bills-passed.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})

# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-number-artificial-intelligence-bills-passed.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-number-artificial-intelligence-bills-passed.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-number-artificial-intelligence-bills-passed.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-number-artificial-intelligence-bills-passed.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear