AI regulation in Bhutan (2026)

GovTech published the Bhutan National AI Strategy 2025 (NAIS 2025), titling its vision 'AI for GNH'. It identifies eight focus sectors (agriculture, tourism, green energy, education, health, public service delivery, natural resources, culture/language) and four enablers: infrastructure, governance and regulations, cybersecurity, and AI skills — with binding regulation listed as a future enabler, not yet enacted.

GovTech issued the Guideline for Generative Artificial Intelligence Usage in the Civil Service in 2024, mandating human oversight, fact-checking, and transparency in AI-generated content, and warning civil servants about data privacy risks with tools such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini. It is an administrative guideline, not statute.

The UNDP-supported AI Readiness Assessment (AIRA 2024) evaluated Bhutan across three pillars — Government as Enabler, Government as User, and Ethical AI — and found critical gaps: no undergraduate AI/ML programmes, a thin talent pool, absent data-governance frameworks, and no comprehensive ethical AI framework in force.

Bhutan's AI governance is explicitly framed around Gross National Happiness principles, emphasising well-being, environmental sustainability, and cultural preservation. The Prime Minister publicly identified job displacement, misinformation, cultural erosion, and energy-intensive AI infrastructure as risks to be addressed through protective design in the strategy.

GovTech's broader Digital Strategy ('Intelligent Bhutan', May 2024) provides the overarching digital transformation context for AI. Capacity-building partnerships include UNDP, UNESCO (civil-servant AI literacy training), and Omdena (AI Lab Programme launched June 2024 as a five-year initiative with Druk Holding and Investments and Thimphu TechPark).

As of May 2026, Bhutan has enacted no comprehensive or sectoral AI statute, and no specific AI bill has been tabled in the National Assembly. The NAIS 2025 treats legislation and regulation as a future foundational enabler to be developed, confirming the current posture is strategy and guidelines only.