MLex reported on 20 August that the Australian government has backed the opposition's move to establish a Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence. The committee will examine the impact of the technology on national security, productivity, competitiveness and living standards, together with the adequacy of existing laws and the importance of data sovereignty.
Vietnam News Agency reported that Deputy Minister of Justice Nguyễn Thanh Tịnh told the closing session of the ASEAN Law Forum 2026 in Hanoi on 19 August that member states share an understanding that AI development must rest on the rule of law, transparency and accountability. The forum, held under the theme of applying AI in lawmaking and law implementation, follows Vietnam's enactment of a dedicated Law on Artificial Intelligence in December 2025, among the first such statutes anywhere.
The Times Group reported that Minister of Information and Digitalisation Shadric Namalomba told the opening of a stakeholder consultative engagement in Lilongwe that Malawi is determined to embrace AI as a driver of digital transformation. The minister coupled that commitment with a call for robust regulatory frameworks and laws to secure responsible and ethical use, signalling an intent to legislate rather than rely on adoption policy alone.
Regulation
The Câmara dos Deputados approved two artificial intelligence bills in its Science, Technology and Innovation Committee on 20 August 2026. Bill 4356/25 sets rules for AI within the Unified Public Security System, permitting analysis of lawfully intercepted communications and facial recognition in risk areas while prohibiting automatic execution of arrests and seizures without qualified human intervention, mass surveillance without a court order, monitoring focused on political opinion, religion or sexual orientation, and the creation of false content to defame or manipulate democratic processes, with auditable records, annual performance reports, subsidiary supplier liability for serious system defects and a biennial congressional review. The same committee approved Bill 1074/26, creating the National Policy for the Promotion of Brazilian Artificial Intelligence, which directs at least 10 per cent of the National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development to qualifying developers and offers a 30 per cent tax credit on domestic research, training, validation and safety testing, conditional on data infrastructure and model training remaining in Brazil under Brazilian control and intellectual property staying in the country for five years.
The Federal Trade Commission opened public comment on 19 August 2026 on a proposed enforcement policy statement concerning personalised pricing, the use of personal data to set prices according to what a company believes an individual will pay. The statement's position is that undisclosed collection or use of personal data for that purpose may violate Section 5 of the FTC Act, with a 30 day comment period running from publication in the Federal Register.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued a request for comment on 19 August 2026 on the listing of compute derivatives contracts, seeking input on the size and liquidity of compute cash markets, market oversight and manipulation concerns, customer protection and perpetual compute futures. Chairman Michael Selig framed the exercise as a first step toward rules for markets in the commodity underpinning the intelligence economy, with comments due by 20 October 2026 following Federal Register publication on 21 August.
Academia
arXiv hosts 'Mapping General-Purpose AI Governance in Twenty AI Middle-Power Jurisdictions' by Josephine Schwab, Nathan Naidoo, Ferruccio Barazzutti, Sheryn Lee and Caio Vieira Machado, submitted on 18 August 2026. Mapping twenty jurisdictions at provision level across systemic risk assessment, evaluation and verification, prohibitions with monitoring, and serious incident reporting, the authors find convergence on form but divergence on force: roughly one provision in five sits in binding law, three quarters of binding instruments do not define general purpose AI, four in five governance actors hold mandates predating it, and outside the EU no jurisdiction imposes a binding evaluation duty on a model developer.
Events
TAB Global will hold the World AI Regulation Summit 2026 at The Pelligon in London on 5 and 6 November 2026. The programme covers the operationalisation of South Korea's AI Basic Act as the first comprehensive regime outside Europe, with Gabriele Mazzini, lead author of the EU AI Act, among the speakers.
The National University of Singapore Faculty of Law will host the eleventh International Legal Ethics Conference from 9 to 11 December 2026 on the theme of continuity and transformation. The programme examines how integrity, independence and accountability withstand technological disruption through legal technology and AI, alongside transnational practice and access to justice.
Sources: MLex, Vietnam News Agency, The Times Group, Câmara dos Deputados, Federal Trade Commission, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, arXiv, TAB Global, National University of Singapore