Colombia is Preparing a Poor Copy of the EU's AI Act
Ah, marvellous. Colombia has decided to regulate artificial intelligence, and what finer inspiration than the EU AI Act — filtered through a photocopier running out of toner and someone's vague memory of a LinkedIn summary. Bill 025 of 2026, currently wending its way through the Colombian House of Representatives, promises 'ethical and responsible development' with the conviction of a government department naming a committee. It applies to developers, providers and deployers of AI systems, which sounds admirably thorough until you notice the entire enforcement apparatus appears to consist of a notepad and hope.
Let's inspect the duties for systems that 'may significantly affect fundamental rights': risk and impact assessments, transparency, human oversight and monitoring. These are fine words, but they've seen service in Brussels, where they come wrapped in five hundred pages and a cannon; in Bogotá, they arrive as a laminated pledge. The EU AI Act, for all its flaws, created authorities, fines, and the kind of bureaucracy that makes lawyers salivate, while Colombia's version reads like a wishlist drafted by the same person who said 'we'll fix the potholes next year.' The title says it all: a poor copy — not a photocopy that holds up on close reading, but one where the margins are stuffed with half-legible annotations from someone who skimmed the original at an airport.
Still, every global south nation must learn that the real export of European regulation is not protection — it is the appearance of it. The tech giants, no doubt, are already drafting compliance strategies that involve a single risk assessment PDF, a volunteer 'human oversight' committee that meets via WhatsApp, and a transparency report that says 'yes, AI exists.' Perhaps the Colombian House will surprise us and the poor copy will gather amendments and become a proper statute; but the pattern is familiar: when the law is a photocopy, the rights it protects are the first thing that gets scaled down to fit. Marvellous.