AI regulation in Dominican Republic: laws & policy (2026)

The Dominican National Competition Defense Commission (Procompetencia) published a report of recommendations on the Organic Law Project regulating AI systems (file 00495-2025-PLO-SE) and forwarded it to the Senate. This is the first formal executive-agency regulatory input into pending AI legislation, signalling multi-institution scrutiny before any vote.

President Luis Abinader signed a Memorandum of Understanding with NVIDIA establishing the Center of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence (CEIA), the first such institution in Central America and the Caribbean. The deal covers a National AI Factory to secure data sovereignty, an AI Academy targeting over 1,000 trained professionals by 2026, and a regional AI innovation hub.

Senator Omar Fernández introduced a package of 11 bills including a comprehensive AI regulatory proposal establishing a rights-centred legal framework for AI development, transparency, and ethics. The Senate Education, Science and Technology Committee began comparative analysis of this bill alongside two other pending Senate AI proposals.

Deputy Tobías Crespo (Fuerza del Pueblo) filed the Dominican Republic's first AI-specific bill in the Chamber of Deputies, proposing a Consejo Nacional para la Inteligencia Artificial (CONIA) to plan and supervise AI, a dedicated AI incentive fund, and explicit bans on military, manipulative, and covert AI uses. The bill drew on PARLATINO's model AI law.

OGTIC and the Cabinet of Innovation and Digital Development published the Estrategia Nacional de Inteligencia Artificial (ENIA), making the Dominican Republic the first Caribbean country with a dedicated national AI plan. ENIA sits within the National Innovation Policy 2030 and the Agenda Digital 2030, targeting AI integration in health, education, justice, and public administration with ethics and regulatory sandboxes as core governance tools.

A senator submitted the first legislative proposal specifically targeting AI regulation to the Dominican Senate, calling for a legal framework to govern AI systems and protect fundamental rights. Although it did not advance, it opened the legislative conversation and preceded a wider wave of bills in 2024–2025.

President Abinader issued Decree 313-22 establishing a new National Cybersecurity Strategy effective through 31 December 2030, replacing the 2018 Decree 230-18. The strategy sets the security baseline for digital infrastructure on which AI systems rely and is a prerequisite for safe AI deployment in the public sector.

As one of 193 UNESCO Member States, the Dominican Republic unanimously adopted the Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence — the first global normative AI instrument. The DR subsequently applied UNESCO's Readiness Assessment Methodology (RAM), scoring 75.0, and its results directly shaped the content of ENIA launched in 2023.

Congress enacted Law No. 172-13, the Dominican Republic's primary data-protection statute implementing Article 44 of the Constitution. It governs collection, storage, use, and disclosure of personal data and establishes rights of access, rectification, and deletion — the principal privacy framework directly applicable to AI-driven data processing, though widely considered outdated for modern AI use cases.

The Dominican Republic enacted Law No. 53-07, establishing the first criminal liability regime for cybercrime and high-technology offences. It provided the foundational legislative tools for prosecuting digital abuses and laid the groundwork for cybersecurity regulation relevant to malicious or harmful AI applications.

The Dominican Republic enacted Law No. 126-02, establishing the legal basis for electronic transactions and digital signatures, implemented by Decree 335-03 (2003). This foundational digital-commerce law created the legal infrastructure — electronic document validity, trusted digital identity — on which subsequent data-protection and AI governance frameworks were built.