Chile AI Regulation Overview

Overview

Chile has established a multi-layered regulatory environment for artificial intelligence characterized by non-binding national strategic policies, administrative circulars for government agencies, binding cybersecurity controls, consumer protection interpretations, and comprehensive pending legislation. The foundation of Chile's AI strategy is anchored in the Política Nacional de Inteligencia Artificial (originally approved via Decreto Supremo N° 20 of 2021 and updated via Decreto N° 12 of 2024/2025), which sets a ten-year strategic planning horizon through December 31, 2031. Coordinated by the Ministry of Science, Technology, Knowledge and Innovation (MinCiencia), the national policy focuses on enabling infrastructure, talent, R&D adoption, human-centered governance, and alignment with international ethical standards.

While overarching statutory AI governance is currently progressing through the Chilean National Congress via consolidated executive and parliamentary bills, binding digital obligations already exist across intersecting regulatory domains. These include strict digital infrastructure and incident-reporting mandates under Ley N° 21.663 (Framework Law on Cybersecurity), procedural enforcement by the Agencia Nacional de Ciberseguridad (ANCI), and the modernization of personal data protection rules under Law N° 21.719 and its implementing decree on compliance models (Decreto N° 662/2025).

Regulatory Approach

Chile's regulatory approach operates on a hybrid model transitioning from administrative soft-law guidance to a formal, risk-tiered statutory regime. For public sector deployment and consumer relations, regulatory authorities utilize interpretative guidelines anchored in existing statutes. State entities operating AI tools must observe human-centered design, non-discrimination, explainability, and privacy standards set forth in Oficio Circular N° 711 (issued jointly by MinCiencia and Segpres) and proactive transparency recommendations issued by the Council for Transparency (Resolución Exenta N° 372). Similarly, consumer protection in AI relationships is supervised by SERNAC under Resolución Exenta N° 33, applying Ley N° 19.496 to ban dark patterns, arbitrary profiling, and deceptive automated interactions.

Concurrently, Chile is codifying a horizontal, risk-based statutory framework directly inspired by comparative international models such as the EU AI Act. The consolidated legislative proposal (Boletín 16821-19 and Boletín 15869-19) establishes a four-tier risk taxonomy (unacceptable, high, limited, and no evident risk). Under this approach, unacceptable AI practices (e.g., subliminal manipulation, unconstrained mass remote biometric identification, facial scraping) are prohibited, while high-risk systems are subjected to mandatory lifecycle risk management, pre-deployment conformity checks, logging, and continuous human oversight.

Key AI Legislation

• Decreto N° 12 (2024/2025 Update of the National AI Policy): Promulgated by MinCiencia, this decree adopts the updated national strategic roadmap through 2031, structuring actions across governance, infrastructure, public adoption, human capital, and monitoring indicators.
• Ley N° 21.663 (Framework Law on Cybersecurity and Critical Information Infrastructure): Establishes national cybersecurity governance, empowers ANCI, mandates risk management for Providers of Essential Services (PSE), and creates stringent requirements for Operators of Vital Importance (OIV).
• Decreto Supremo N° 285 (2025): Establishes the administrative qualification procedure for ANCI to designate Operators of Vital Importance (OIV) based on service dependency and systemic impact.
• Instrucción General N° 1 (ANCI, 2025): Mandates registration of designated incident reporting officers (Encargado/a de Reportar) for essential service providers on ANCI's 24/7 National Incident Platform.
• Oficio Circular N° 711 / Instructivo MinCiencia (2023/2024): Joint administrative circular establishing non-binding operational guidelines for state agencies developing, procuring, or operating AI systems.
• Resolución Exenta N° 372 (Council for Transparency, 2024): Recommends proactive algorithmic transparency registries and explainability standards for automated decision systems (SDA) used by public entities.
• SERNAC Interpretative Circular (Resolución Exenta N° 33, 2022): Clarifies consumer protection rights under Ley N° 19.496 regarding AI profiling, automated contracting, dark patterns, and mandatory human review.
• Decreto N° 662/2025 (Reglamento Modelos de Prevención de Infracciones - Law 21.719): Prepared by the Ministry of Finance, setting requirements for voluntary data protection compliance programs (MPI) eligible for official registration and certification.
• Proyecto de Ley que regula los Sistemas de IA (Boletín 16821-19 / 15869-19): Consolidated Executive and parliamentary bill establishing a statutory risk-based regulatory framework for AI systems, currently under review in the Senate.
• Penal Code Amendment Bills (Boletines 15935-07, 16021-07, 16112-07, 17112-19): Parliamentary motions seeking to criminalize AI-enabled fraud, introduce AI use as an aggravating criminal circumstance (Article 12), penalize synthetic identity usurpation (deepfakes), and establish fundamental rights limits on AI.

Governance & Enforcement Bodies

Chile's AI governance architecture involves a combination of policy-coordinating ministries, digital transformational units, specialized sectoral oversight authorities, and newly established autonomous public services. The Ministry of Science, Technology, Knowledge and Innovation (MinCiencia) acts as the primary policy lead, coordinating implementation of the National AI Policy, managing evaluative indicators, and hosting consultative expert advisory councils. Public sector AI adoption and digital administrative compliance are monitored by the Division of Government Digital (DGD) within the Ministry Secretariat General of the Presidency (Segpres), which holds authority to issue information requests to agency Digital Transformation Coordinators.

Operational regulatory enforcement is concentrated in domain-specific public services. Cyber resilience and critical infrastructure dependencies are governed by the Agencia Nacional de Ciberseguridad (ANCI), which maintains national registry platforms, issues technical instructions, and conducts compliance audits. Data protection supervision and compliance model registrations fall under the Agency for the Protection of Personal Data established by Law N° 21.719. Market conduct, algorithmic fairness in consumer transactions, and proactive public disclosures are monitored by SERNAC and the Council for Transparency (CPLT), respectively, while criminal infractions involving AI tools are investigated by the Public Prosecutor's Office (Ministerio Público) and specialized police cyber units.

Penalties & Enforcement

Penalties and administrative enforcement mechanisms in Chile vary depending on the statutory framework implicated by the AI application or digital infrastructure. Under Ley N° 21.663 (Framework Law on Cybersecurity), ANCI possesses direct statutory sanctioning powers to penalize non-compliance by critical operators and essential service providers, with administrative fines reaching up to 40,000 UTM for severe violations. Minor administrative infractions under ANCI Instrucción General N° 1—such as failure to properly register incident reporting officers—carry administrative fines of up to 5,000 UTM following a mandatory five-business-day cure period.

Pending legislation introduces substantial monetary penalties calibrated directly to AI risk levels and corporate scale. The consolidated statutory AI framework (Boletines 16821-19 and 15869-19) contemplates administrative fines ranging from 5,000 to 20,000 UTM, alongside non-monetary remedies including mandatory corrective actions, temporary operational suspensions, or market withdrawal of non-compliant high-risk systems. Furthermore, legislative motions modifying the Penal Code (Boletines 15935-07, 16021-07, and 16112-07) seek to expand criminal liability, treating AI deployment as a specific aggravating factor in sentencing, expanding fraud definitions (Articles 468 and 469) to capture synthetic media, and imposing criminal penalties for deepfake-enabled identity usurpation.

Data Protection Framework

Data protection serves as a critical pillar of Chilean AI regulation. Law No. 21.719 modernized Chile's historical privacy regime (Law No. 19.628), creating the autonomous Agency for the Protection of Personal Data and establishing mandatory compliance frameworks for data controllers. Implementing rules under Decreto N° 662/2025 detail the structure for voluntary Models of Prevention of Infringements (Modelos de Prevención de Infracciones — MPI). Under these models, entities developing or operating data-driven AI systems must maintain formal Records of Processing Activities (RAT), conduct risk assessments, assign a Data Protection Delegate (DPD), and institute internal reporting, audit, and breach notification mechanisms.

In public sector administration and consumer markets, privacy directives strictly limit the use of personal data in automated tools. Oficio Circular N° 711 explicitly prohibits public agencies from inputting unencrypted, sensitive, or confidential personal data into third-party generative AI platforms that lack formal contractual privacy guarantees. SERNAC's Interpretative Circular further classifies behavioral and profiling data collected via consumer AI tools as heightened-risk data, requiring strict application of purpose specification, data minimization, robust access controls, and cybersecurity risk mitigations.

Sector-Specific Rules

Sector-specific AI guidelines in Chile are primarily active within state administration, public information transparency, critical infrastructure, and consumer markets. For government administration, Oficio Circular N° 711 mandates that state bodies conduct pre-deployment evaluations to determine whether AI is an appropriate tool, enforce human-in-the-loop controls for administrative decisions, and maintain accessible disclosure channels when interacting with citizens via automated chatbots or decision-support algorithms.

In public information access, the Council for Transparency's Resolución Exenta N° 372 requires public entities deploying Automated and Semi-Automated Decision Systems (SDA) to establish proactive transparency registers. Agencies must disclose model architecture, decision logic, training data provenance, mitigation controls, and contact points for human review. In critical sectors—including energy, telecommunications, banking, health, and transport—Ley N° 21.663 and Decreto Supremo N° 285 impose stringent operational continuity, cybersecurity testing, incident reporting timelines (including initial 3-hour warnings), and mandatory qualification reviews every three years for designated Operators of Vital Importance (OIV).

International Alignment

Chile's national AI policies and legislative draft bills explicitly align with major international frameworks and benchmark standards. The updated National Artificial Intelligence Policy (Decreto N° 12) formally incorporates the OECD's updated definition of AI systems and integrates UNESCO's Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence to promote human-centric development, non-discrimination, autonomy, and transparency.

Legislative drafting in the National Congress—most notably the consolidated AI bill (Boletín 16821-19 / 15869-19)—draws directly from comparative law, specifically mirroring the structure and risk-tier methodology of the European Union AI Act. The draft bill incorporates international standardizations for technical documentation, model card logging, synthetic content labeling, and regulatory sandboxes for legal experimentation, aiming to foster international interoperability and reduce compliance barriers for Chilean exporters.

Future Developments

The legislative agenda in Chile points toward the formal codification of a binding national statutory framework. The consolidated bill regulating Artificial Intelligence Systems, Robotics, and Related Technologies (Boletín 15869-19 / 16821-19) passed the Chamber of Deputies in October 2025 and is currently undergoing review during its second constitutional stage in the Senate's Commission on Future Challenges, Science, Technology, Knowledge and Innovation. Once enacted, it will establish mandatory conformity procedures, high-risk registers, and national governance roles divided between MinCiencia and the Data Protection Agency.

In parallel, full implementation of Law N° 21.719 and its implementing decree on MPI compliance programs (Decreto N° 662/2025) is scheduled for general entry into force on December 1, 2026, coinciding with the operational activation of the new Personal Data Protection Agency. Concurrently, ANCI will continue executing scheduled triennial qualification cycles for Operators of Vital Importance under Decreto Supremo N° 285, while Congress evaluates parliamentary motions targeting AI misuse under the Penal Code.

Enforcement Bodies

Agency	Mandate	Key Powers	Website
Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología, Conocimiento e Innovación (MinCiencia)	Policy coordination, National AI Policy execution, inter-agency alignment, and R&D promotion.	Issues strategic action plans, sets guidelines, coordinates public consultations, oversees technical advisory councils.	https://www.minciencia.gob.cl/noticias/chile-presenta-la-primera-politica-nacional-de-inteligencia-artificial/
Agencia Nacional de Ciberseguridad (ANCI)	Autonomous technical public service regulating cybersecurity, essential services, and OIV status under Law 21.663.	Issues binding technical standards, operates national 24/7 incident portal, designates OIVs, conducts audits, imposes fines up to 40,000 UTM.	https://portal.anci.gob.cl
Agencia de Protección de Datos Personales	Personal data protection supervision, public registry administration, and compliance certification under Law 21.719.	Certifies and registers MPI compliance programs, conducts audits, investigates data breaches, revokes certifications, imposes administrative sanctions.
Consejo para la Transparencia (CPLT)	Supervision of public transparency, access to information, and algorithmic disclosures under Law N° 20.285.	Issues proactive algorithmic transparency guidelines, publishes technical adoption guides, monitors active transparency portals.
Servicio Nacional del Consumidor (SERNAC)	Consumer rights protection in commercial relations and digital market surveillance under Ley N° 19.496.	Issues interpretative circulars, conducts market oversight, investigates automated consumer profiling, handles complaints.
División de Gobierno Digital (DGD - Segpres)	Monitoring and coordination of digital transformation across state administration entities.	Issues official information requests (oficiar) to agency Digital Transformation Coordinators, monitors public AI deployment.