A year in law and regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) is an eon. Whilst a robust regulatory framework or approach should be consistent, grounded in principles, and predictable, it must also evolve to address changing attitudes and perceptions. And whilst no one wants to kill the goose that lays the golden egg by diving headfirst into innovation-curbing regulation, the shift towards favoring some kind of regulation is noticeably gaining speed, with growing fears of social, economic, and political ills.

Now, with the EU successfully rolling out its extensive AI regulatory framework in the EU Artificial Intelligence Act (the EU AI Act), one question is whether other countries will follow suit to enact their own compatible or comparable 'hard law' in a classic demonstration of the 'Brussels effect.'

In his Insight article last year, Jeffrey Lim, Director at Joyce A. Tan & Partners LLC, described how Singapore has been a prime example of a jurisdiction that has positioned itself as a paragon of a regulation-lite, community-fostered, and inclusive multi-stakeholder jurisdiction. With its voluntary Model Governance Framework now in its second version and encompassing generative AI (genAI Model Framework), in this Insight article, Jeffrey explains how Singapore appears set to continue in this vein - an approach that has already yielded significant private sector in-country investment in AI capability building.