Under Brazil's 2025 BRICS chairmanship, member-state leaders signed a statement on the global governance of artificial intelligence — the bloc's first real attempt at a shared position on how AI should be regulated internationally, rather than each country going it alone.
The core argument
The declaration's central claim is about access, not just safety: it says AI technology access must be "fair, equitable, empowering and inclusive," and that every country — regardless of where it sits economically — has a right to benefit from, develop and use AI. Brazilian President Lula put it more bluntly at the summit: AI development "must not become a privilege for a handful of countries, nor a tool of manipulation in the hands of millionaires."
The declaration also pushes for the United Nations to be the central venue for global AI governance, explicitly warning against fragmented, duplicated governance efforts springing up in parallel forums — a position that reads as pushback against AI-safety frameworks driven mainly by the US and EU.
What it doesn't do
It's a statement of principle, not a binding treaty or a regulation — nothing in it requires any BRICS member to change a law. Each country is explicitly left free to set its own domestic AI rules; the declaration affirms "digital sovereignty" as a right rather than imposing one shared rulebook. That's also why the member states' actual regulatory approaches still look quite different from each other (our companion post compares India, China and Brazil's approaches directly).