AI regulation in Vietnam (2026)

Vietnam's dedicated AI Law became operative on 1 March 2026, making Vietnam the first country in Southeast Asia with a comprehensive AI law in effect. Existing AI system operators in most sectors were granted a 12-month compliance grace period (to 1 March 2027); health, education, and finance systems have until 1 September 2027.

The 15th National Assembly passed Vietnam's standalone AI Law (8 chapters, 35 articles) with 429 of 434 deputies in favour. It introduces a three-tier risk-based framework (low/medium/high), mandates human oversight on consequential decisions, and prohibits AI systems that threaten national security or manipulate public opinion. The Ministry of Science and Technology is designated lead regulator.

The Government published the draft AI Law for stakeholder consultation ahead of the October 2025 National Assembly session, accelerating from the Digital Technology Industry Law framework passed just months earlier. The draft drew heavily on the EU AI Act's risk-based architecture while emphasising national sovereignty and 'Make in Vietnam' AI development.

Vietnam's National Assembly passed a broad digital industry law (effective 1 January 2026) that for the first time gave statutory definition to AI systems and created incentives for semiconductor and AI investment; it also legally defined digital assets. Most AI provisions were subsequently superseded when the dedicated AI Law (No. 134/2025) was enacted six months later.

MOST issued Vietnam's first formal AI ethics document — a voluntary guide articulating nine responsible-AI principles: cooperation, transparency, controllability, safety, security, privacy, human rights, user support, and accountability. Though non-binding, it shaped the obligations later codified in the AI Law and positioned Vietnam within the global responsible-AI discourse.

Vietnam's first comprehensive personal data protection rules (issued 17 April 2023, effective 1 July 2023) applied to any entity processing Vietnamese residents' data, including AI systems using personal data for training or inference. It established consent requirements, data-subject rights, and mandatory data-processing impact assessments — directly shaping permissible AI data pipelines.

Decree 53 specified the 10 categories of online services (including data storage, e-commerce, and social media) subject to mandatory domestic data retention under the 2018 Cybersecurity Law, and clarified when foreign operators must establish a local presence. These data-localisation obligations became a critical constraint on where AI training data and model outputs can be hosted for services operating in Vietnam.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc signed Vietnam's first dedicated national AI strategy, targeting a top-4 ASEAN and top-50 global ranking in AI by 2030, three national AI innovation centres, ten regionally recognised AI brands, and 50 open datasets. It assigned the Ministry of Science and Technology as the lead coordinating body and directed development of a legal framework for AI — laying the institutional groundwork for all subsequent regulation.

The Prime Minister approved Vietnam's overarching digital transformation roadmap, targeting a 20% digital-economy share of GDP by 2025 and 30% by 2030, and identifying AI as a priority technology alongside cloud and big data. Decision 749 set the whole-of-government demand that subsequently drove the 2021 AI strategy and sustained AI investment commitments.

Vietnam's Cybersecurity Law (passed 12 June 2018, effective 1 January 2019) required domestic and foreign digital-service providers to store user data locally and, in some cases, to establish a local office. This law established Vietnam's data-sovereignty doctrine — the foundational constraint within which all subsequent AI data, cloud, and model-deployment regulations were built.