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AI-Pac is Flint’s digest providing our take on the major developments in Asia-Pacific AI policy and regulation. In a fast-moving environment, this newsletter is designed to help you stay on top of the regulatory agenda and to consider what it means for your business. Please see here for our first nine blogs, spanning 2024 and early 2025. In each update, we set out:
Related reading: Explore how “sovereign AI” strategies across Asia-Pacific will affect global businesses — Sovereign AI in APAC: what it means for business.
From March to May 2025, APAC governments watched US AI policy developments closely and carefully considered the implications for their own AI policy and regulation, a process that will continue in the coming months. But APAC governments did not stand still, and there were important developments in Korea, Japan, and India. In this digest:
If you would like to discuss how AI policy and regulation in Asia-Pacific will impact your business, please get in touch with the team here.
APAC governments’ AI ambitions are buffeted by US actions on chips and on regulation
On 13 May, the Trump administration announced its decision to rescind and replace the Biden-era AI Diffusion Policy, potentially signalling a more liberal approach to the diffusion of advanced AI chips.
Asia-Pacific governments are still seeking to understand what the US’s shift in approach means for their countries’ access to advanced chips, while also seeking to navigate broader negotiations over tariffs. APAC governments may have derived cautious optimism from the announcement in late May of US support for a 5GW AI data centre campus in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). OpenAI has committed to support a 1GW cluster as part of this announcement, and has also signalled its interest in supporting AI infrastructure buildout in Asia-Pacific. Chief Strategy Officer, Jason Kwon, attended Singapore’s AT x SG Summit and was also reported to be visiting Japan, South Korea, Australia, and India.
For a deeper dive into the global AI Safety Summit process and what it means for regulation, read: The AI Safety Summit and the path to AI regulation.
The shake-up in the AI Diffusion Rule provides new openings for APAC governments to negotiate access to advanced AI technology. However, significant uncertainties remain, particularly over how access to advanced chips could be connected to other issues in trade negotiations, such as the loosening of data localisation mandates opposed by US firms.
US scrutiny over APAC governments’ ties to China could also complicate access to chips. Two days after a Malaysian government official said that the Skyvast-Huawei AI project marked the first deployment of Huawei’s chips and servers and the DeepSeek LLM outside of China, the government distanced itself from the project. This followed a warning from Trump’s AI czar, David Sacks, that “the full Chinese AI stack is here”.
How APAC countries approach AI regulation may itself be a factor in trade and technology negotiations with the US. In late April, the US administration sent a letter to the European Commission warning that its EU General-Purpose AI Code of Practice would stifle AI innovation and impose discriminatory burdens on largely US-based developers. APAC countries - especially those such as Korea and Australia that are further down the road towards regulation - will be especially alert to potential US opposition to regulation.
South Korea: An AI-focused electoral race
On 3 June, South Korea elected Lee Jae-mying as President. The presidential campaign included high-profile pledges of investment in Korea’s AI capabilities, but with relatively little detail on implementation plans.
Lee has publicly reaffirmed Korea’s ambition to be among the top three AI powers globally. In April, he pledged to create a 100 trillion won ($70 billion) fund to advance AI development through public-private partnerships. His proposals included building national AI data clusters, securing over 50,000 advanced GPUs, and creating a Korean-style ChatGPT that would be made widely available for public use.
Beyond these broad commitments, there is a notable lack of detail on execution planning. When challenged on the KRW 100 trillion commitment, Lee clarified that this would include private capital, but even attracting sufficient private investment is likely to be challenging without a clear roadmap. To illustrate this, there remains considerable uncertainty over the prospects of a “National AI Data Centre” announced under the previous administration in February. The RfP to select an operator for the facility has so far attracted no bids as private players worry about return on investment.
How the new administration approaches AI regulation also remains to be seen. Korea’s AI Basic Act is set to take effect in January 2026, with several subordinate decrees still pending. Businesses face uncertainty over how regulatory obligations will differentiate between AI developers and deployers, as well as on the potential for overlap between horizontal, economy-wide rules and vertical obligations in sectors such as transport and healthcare. Regulation did not feature prominently in the campaigns, and businesses will be watching closely for any sign of a shift in emphasis from the new administration.
Japan: a flexible approach to regulation
On 28 May, Japan’s House of Councillors passed “Bill on the Promotion of Research and Development and Application of Artificial Intelligence-Related Technologies". This marked Japan’s first horizontal piece of AI regulation after a history of non-binding guidelines and industry self-regulation.
Similar to Korea’s AI Basic Act, Japan’s new bill provides a strategy blueprint of the country’s AI development and signals a more comprehensive approach to regulate AI. But unlike Korea's AI Basic Act, Japan’s bill does not propose risk tiers or impose specific obligations, restrictions, or penalties. Its key provisions include requiring businesses to cooperate with the government’s AI measures and empowering the government to investigate violations of public rights and interests. Authorities may publicly disclose the names of companies that fail to cooperate with investigations, especially in cases involving human rights abuses or other malicious AI-related activities.
The narrow scope of the bill reflects Japan’s ambition to take a flexible, innovation-friendly approach to AI regulation. Businesses should however closely monitor how the government enforces the “name and shame” approach embedded in the bill. More broadly, Japan and Korea’s AI bills present contrasting models for other regional governments seeking to regulate.
India: pursuing sovereign chips and LLMs in the build-up to the next AI Summit
India has made important progress towards developing sovereign LLM and homegrown semiconductor chips over the past few months.
In April, the government selected Sarvam AI, a Bengaluru-based startup, to develop India’s first sovereign LLM under the IndiaAI Mission. This model will be built entirely in India, optimised for Indian languages, and designed for secure, population-scale deployment. Meanwhile, on 29 May, Union Minister for Electronics and IT, Ashwini Vaishnaw, said that India’s first homegrown semiconductor chip would be launched this year. Although India is focused on strengthening technological cooperation with the US under the US-India strategic technology partnership, the uncertainty over the US’s approach to AI diffusion has accelerated the drive to simultaneously develop domestic capabilities.
India is also seeking to position itself as a provider of AI-enabled services to the global South, building on its success with Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI). DPI services include digital identity (Aadhaar), payments (UPI), and data exchange (Account Aggregator), earning widespread recognition as a model for global South countries. Speaking at the 2025 Carnegie Global Technology Summit in April, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (Meity) Secretary, S. Krishnan, highlighted, “We are in a good place to actually make AI available through a DPI framework for the global south”. Ensuring the global South benefits from AI will be a key theme at the upcoming India AI Summit, most likely to be in February 2026.
This blog was written by Abigail Chen, Ewan Lusty, David Skelton, and Sanskriti Bhatia, with the input of Flint’s Senior Adviser network based across Asia-Pacific. Abigail, based in Hong Kong, has experience in technology and financial policy from her prior roles in a law firm and think tanks. Ewan and David are both based in Singapore. Ewan has been supporting Flint clients on a range of digital policy issues for over four years, prior to which he advised UK government ministers on online safety regulation. David spent seven years at Google, most recently working within the Global Strategy and Innovation team, as well as leading Google’s Policy Planning team within Asia Pacific. Sanskriti was an intern with Flint and is an engineer turned tech policy professional from India, recently completing an M.Phil. in Public Policy at the University of Cambridge.