AI regulation in Chile: laws & policy (2026)

Bill No. 16821-19 was referred to the Senate's Future Challenges, Science, Technology and Innovation Committee for its second constitutional review. No fixed enactment date has been set; the Senate may introduce amendments before final passage.

The Chamber approved the government's comprehensive AI bill and forwarded it to the Senate, despite rejecting key governance articles. The bill adopts a four-tier risk model (unacceptable / high / limited / no-evident-risk) modeled on the EU AI Act, with fines up to 20,000 UTM and a civil liability regime.

Core provisions of Chile's first standalone cybersecurity law took effect, imposing mandatory risk management, cybersecurity-officer designation, and incident-reporting duties on Operators of Vital Importance (OVI), including AI-reliant critical-infrastructure operators, supervised by ANCI with fines up to 40,000 UTM.

Chile published a comprehensive overhaul of its data protection regime, creating an autonomous Personal Data Protection Agency (Agencia de Protección de Datos Personales) and establishing in Art. 8 bis an explicit right to explanation for automated decisions with legal or significant effects, directly applicable to AI systems. Full entry into force is set for 1 December 2026.

The executive merged its own draft with a prior parliamentary proposal and submitted a unified AI bill to the Chamber of Deputies. The bill covers definitions, prohibited uses (unacceptable-risk systems), obligations for high-risk systems, transparency for synthetic content, governance under the Ministry of Science, and supervisory powers for the data-protection and cybersecurity agencies.

Chile formally updated its National AI Policy through Supreme Decree No. 12, shifting the national strategy from technology promotion alone to a governance-first model that prioritises human rights, social equity, environmental sustainability, and the ethics of generative AI, providing the policy foundation for the subsequent legislative bill.

The Ministry of Science, Technology, Knowledge and Innovation adopted Chile's inaugural AI policy, a ten-year strategic framework with 70 priority actions and 185 initiatives built on three pillars: enabling factors, technology use and development, and ethics and security. Aligned explicitly with OECD AI Principles, it committed CLP 26 billion in public investment and engaged over 8,000 stakeholders in its drafting.

As an OECD member, Chile endorsed the first intergovernmental AI standard, committing to human-centred, transparent, robust, accountable, and trustworthy AI. The OECD AI Principles became the explicit normative reference in all subsequent Chilean AI policy documents and legislative proposals.