AI Watch: Global regulatory tracker - Singapore (UPDATED)

Singapore's AI frameworks guide AI ethical and governance principles, with existing sector-specific regulations addressing AI risks.

Laws/Regulations directly regulating AI (the “AI Regulations”)

Currently, there are no specific laws, statutory rules, or regulations in Singapore that directly regulate AI.

To strike a balance between allowing AI innovation to develop, and safeguarding public interest in AI ethics and governance, the Singapore government has thus far developed various frameworks and tools to guide AI deployment and promote the responsible use of AI, including the Model Governance Frameworks and other AI testing frameworks and toolkits as described below.

The Singapore government has also recently identified AI as a strategic advantage for Singapore and has set its vision on being a trusted hub where companies and researchers come together to develop, test, and deploy impactful AI solutions effectively, responsibly, and at speed. To this end, the Singapore government has signaled its intent to define how AI is developed and used in Singapore and to set clear rules to ensure AI is applied responsibly and safely. Further developments in this area can be expected.

Status of the AI Regulations

As noted above, there are currently no specific laws or regulations in Singapore that directly regulate AI. The Singapore government has developed the following frameworks and tools to guide AI deployment and promote the responsible use of AI:

• Model Governance Frameworks:
  • Model AI Governance Framework¹ (2019, updated in 2020) ("2020 MGF for AI"), which provides detailed guidance to private sector organizations to address key ethical and governance issues when deploying AI solutions
  • Model AI Governance Framework for Generative AI² ("2024 MGF for Generative AI"), which outlines nine dimensions to create a trusted environment to enable end-users to use Generative AI confidently and safely
  • Model AI Governance Framework for Agentic AI³ ("2026 MGF for Agentic AI"), which is a first-of-its-kind framework seeking to give organiations a structured overview of the risks of Agentic AI and emerging best practices in managing these risks
• Testing Frameworks and Toolkits:
  • AI Verify⁴, an AI governance testing framework and toolkit developed by the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore (IMDA) in consultation with the private sectorto help organizations validate the performance of their AI systems against ethical principles through standardized tests. AI Verify has been mapped to the USA's National Institute of Standards and Technology AI Risk Management Framework⁵ and the ISO/IEC 42001 standards on the responsible adoption of AI within organizations⁶
  • Global AI Assurance Pilot (2025)⁷, which was launched by the AI Verify Foundation (AIVF)⁸, a not-for-profit foundation set up by IMDA, helps to codify emerging norms and best practices around the technical testing of Generative AI applications by putting existing real-world Generative AI applications to the test with specialist AI testing firms
  • Starter Kit for Testing LLM-Based Applications for Safety and Reliability (2026)⁹, which was developed by IMDA based on insights from the Global AI Assurance Pilot to consolidate emerging best practices and methodologies for the testing of LLM-based applications

In addition, as noted above, the Singapore government has identified the harnessing of AI as a strategic advantage for Singapore, and has developed national strategies and missions as follows:

• The National Artificial Intelligence Strategy 2.0¹⁰ (first launched in 2019, updated in 2023) (NAIS 2.0), which outlines Singapore's ambition and commitment to building a trusted and responsible AI ecosystem, driving innovation and growth through AI, and empowering its people and businesses to understand and engage with AI
• In the Budget Statement 2026¹¹, the Singapore government announced the establishment of a new National AI Council, to be chaired by the Prime Minister, to provide strategic direction and to drive Singapore's AI agenda. A set of AI Missions was also launched to drive AI-led transformation in key sectors of the economy, including advanced manufacturing, connectivity, finance and healthcare. Details are being finalized by the relevant government ministries and further development in this area can be expected in the near future

Other laws affecting AI

There are various laws that do not directly seek to regulate AI but may affect the development or use of AI in Singapore. A non-exhaustive list of key examples includes:

• The Road Traffic Act 1961, which was amended in 2017 to allow for the testing and use of autonomous motor vehicles¹²
• The Health Products Act 2007, which requires medical devices that incorporate AI technology to be registered before they are used¹³

In addition, various Singapore regulatory agencies have adopted soft law approaches by issuing guidelines on the responsible use of AI. A non-exhaustive list of key examples includes:

• The Personal Data Protection Commission of Singapore issued the Advisory Guidelines on Use of Personal Data in AI Recommendation and Decision Systems¹⁴ in 2024 to provide organizations with certainty on when they can use personal data to develop and deploy systems that embed machine-learning models
• The Monetary Authority of Singapore issued the Principles to Promote Fairness, Ethics, Accountability and Transparency (FEAT) in the Use of Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics in Singapore's Financial Sector¹⁵ in 2018 (updated in 2019) to provide a set of foundational principles for firms to consider when using AI in decision-making in the provision of financial products and services
• The Ministry of Health, Health Sciences Authority and Integrated Health Information Systems jointly issued the Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare Guidelines¹⁶ in 2021 to improve the understanding of, codify good practice, and support the safe growth of AI in healthcare
• The Singapore Courts issued a Guide on the Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence Tools by Court Users¹⁷ in 2024 to support ethical, professional and responsible AI use by court users in the materials submitted to the courts
• The Ministry of Law proposed a draft Guide for Using Generative AI in the Legal Sector¹⁸ in September 2025 to set out general principles and good practices to encourage responsible, ethical and effective use of Generative AI in the legal services sector

Definition of “AI”

As noted above, there are currently no specific laws or regulations in Singapore that directly regulate AI. Accordingly, no clear definition of AI is currently recognized in Singapore's national legislation.

However, the 2020 MGF for AI defines AI as "a set of technologies that seek to simulate human traits such as knowledge, reasoning, problem solving, perception, learning and planning, and, depending on the AI model, produce an output or decision (such as a prediction, recommendation and/or classification)."¹⁹

The 2024 MGF for Generative AI defines Generative AI as "AI models capable of generating text, images or other media. They learn the patterns and structure of their input training data and generate new data with similar characteristics. Advances in transformer-based deep neural networks enable Generative AI to accept natural language prompts as input, including large language models".²⁰

The 2026 MGF for Agentic AI defines Agentic AI as "systems that can plan across multiple steps to achieve specified objectives, using AI agents [which] usually possess some degree of independent planning and action taking (e.g., searching the web or creating files) over multiple steps to achieve a user-defined goal."²¹

Territorial scope

As noted above, there are currently no specific laws or regulations in Singapore that directly regulate AI. Accordingly, there is no specific territorial scope at this stage.

Sectoral scope

As noted above, there are currently no specific laws or regulations in Singapore that directly regulate AI. However, there are certain compliance requirements for the use of AI in certain sectors, such as health and transport, as explained in the "Other laws affecting AI" section above.

Compliance roles

As noted above, there are currently no specific laws or regulations in Singapore that directly regulate AI. Accordingly, there are currently no specific or unique obligations imposed on developers, users, operators and/or deployers of AI systems.

Core issues that the AI Regulations seek to address

As noted above, there are currently no specific laws or regulations in Singapore that directly regulate AI. Nevertheless, the 2024 MGF for Generative AI proposes nine dimensions to be looked at in totality to foster a trusted ecosystem²²:

1. Accountability – allocation of responsibility to players along the AI development chain
2. Data – ensuring quality of data fed to AI models through the use of trusted data sources
3. Trusted development and deployment – encouraging transparency and disclosure to enhance broader awareness and safety
4. Incident reporting – establishing incident-management structures and processes for timely notification and remediation
5. Testing and assurance – adopting third-party testing against common AI testing standards to demonstrate trust to end-users
6. Security – addressing risks of new threat vectors being injected through AI models
7. Content provenance – developing technologies to enhance transparency about where and how content is generated
8. Safety and alignment research & development – accelerating investment in research & development to improve model alignment with human intention and values
9. AI for public good – harnessing AI to benefit the public by democratizing access, improving public sector adoption, upskilling workers and developing AI systems sustainably

The 2026 MGF for Agentic AI similarly identifies four dimensions to be considered in the adoption and deployment of Agentic AI²³:

• Assess and bound the risks upfront – understanding the risks posed by the agent's actions, and designing appropriate boundaries at the planning stage to manage such risks
• Make humans meaningfully accountable – clearly defining the responsibilities of different stakeholders, including designing significant checkpoints in the agentic workflow that require human approval
• Implement technical controls and processes – implementing technical measures across the agent lifecycle (during development, before deployment, and during and after deployment) to test and monitor for safety and reliability
• Enable end-user responsibility – informing users of the agent's range of actions, access to data and the user's own responsibilities and training users to manage human-agent interaction and exercise effective oversight

The NAIS 2.0 also sets out Singapore's long-term visions and goals with regard to AI, which includes working towards three systems through a series of "enablers": "Activity Drivers (Enablers: Industry, Government, Research)", "People & Communities (Enablers: Talent, Capabilities, Placemaking)", and "Infrastructure & Environment (Enablers: Compute, Data, Trusted Environment, Leader in Thought and Action)."²⁴

Risk categorization

As noted above, there are currently no specific laws or regulations in Singapore that directly regulate AI. The relevant frameworks and guidelines also do not set out an AI-related risk categorization. However, the 2024 MGF for Generative AI mentions that reporting of incidents should be proportionate and calibrated for practicality and cites the EU AI Act as a potential reference point, which adopts risk categorization with regard to incident reporting.²⁵

Key compliance requirements

As noted above, there are currently no specific laws or regulations in Singapore that directly regulate AI. However, there are certain compliance requirements for the use of AI in certain sectors, such as health and transport, as explained in the "Other laws affecting AI" section above.

Regulators

Singapore does not currently have a specific designated regulator for AI, as the use of AI is currently governed by existing sectoral laws. However, the following government agencies play a role in the AI ecosystem:

• IMDA oversees the responsible adoption of AI across both public and private sectors, primarily through the aforementioned frameworks and guidelines
• Smart Nation and Digital Government Office, along with the Ministry of Communication and Information, issued the NAIS 2.0 and are responsible for implementing the national strategy for AI
• Digital Trust Centre Singapore, as the designated Singapore AI Safety Institute, works with IMDA to drive efforts for advancing AI safety in Singapore, including the development of policies and the corraling of efforts across research ecosystems in relation to Singapore's AI evaluation and testing work²⁶Enforcement powers and penalties
• As noted above, there are currently no specific laws or regulations in Singapore that directly regulate AI. As such, enforcement and penalties relating to the creation, dissemination and/or use of AI are governed by related violations in non-AI legislation.

Enforcement powers and penalties

As noted above, there are currently no specific laws or regulations in Singapore that directly regulate AI. As such, enforcement and penalties relating to the creation, dissemination and/or use of AI are governed by related violations in non-AI legislation.

1 The Model AI Governance Framework is available here.
2 The Model AI Governance Framework for Generative AI is available here.
3 The Model AI Governance Framework for Agentic AI is available here.
4 Details of AI Verify are available here.
5 Details of AI Verify's crosswalk with NIST AI Risk Management Framework are available here.
6 Details of AI Verify's crosswalk with ISO/IEC 420001 are available here.
7 The Main Report of the Global AI Assurance Pilot is available here.
8 Details of AI Verify Foundation are available here.
9 The Starter Kit for Testing LLM-Based Applications for Safety and Reliability is available here.
10 The National Artificial Intelligence Strategy 2.0 is available here.
11 The Budget Statement 2026 is available here.
12 The Road Traffic Act is available here, see Articles 6C and 6E.
13 The Health Products Act is available here.
14 The Advisory Guidelines on Use of Personal Data in AI Recommendation and Decision Systems are available here.
15 The Principles to Promote Fairness, Ethics, Accountability and Transparency (FEAT) in the Use of Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics in Singapore's Financial Sector are available here.
16 The Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare Guidelines are available here.
17 The Guide on the Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence Tools by Court Users is available here.
18 The draft Guide for Using Generative AI in the Legal Sector is available here.
19 Please see the Model AI Governance Framework available here, page 18.
20 Please see the draft Model AI Governance Framework for Generative AI available here, page 3.
21 Please see the draft Model AI Governance Framework for Agentic AI available here, page 3.
22 Please see the draft Model AI Governance Framework for Generative AI available here.
23 Please see the draft Model AI Governance Framework for Agentic AI available here.
24 Please see the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy 2.0 available here, page 14.
25 Please see the draft Model AI Governance Framework for Generative AI available here, page 14.
26 Details of the Singapore AI Safety Institute are available here.

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