Malaysia drafting AI governance law to address safety and accountability
A Sovereign AI Cloud is also planned under Budget 2027 to protect the country’s strategic information, according to Digital Minister Gobind Singh Deo.
Malaysia is drafting the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Governance Bill to improve accountability and safety as autonomous systems and identity impersonation create risks, Digital Minister Gobind Singh Deo told the Dewan Rakyat.
Speaking on Oct 28 during his ministry’s policy-stage winding-up for the Supply Bill 2027, Gobind said the proposed legislation would address situations where AI disregards human directions or resists being shut down.
He cited risks reported by Anthropic and said stronger safeguards were needed to protect national sovereignty. The bill would give particular attention to impersonation and false information, which he said were hard to identify and complicated efforts to determine responsibility.
Gobind said supporting initiatives already developed included MY-AISafe, the AI Code of Ethics and the MY-AI Standards Platform. These provide guidance and frameworks for testing AI safety.
On data sovereignty, he said Malaysia’s approach would balance controls reflecting national interests and risks with continued openness to technological innovation, international trade and cooperation across borders.
Responding to a question about AI-risk awareness among schoolchildren, Gobind said his ministry was prepared to coordinate learning modules with other ministries. He also said an entity such as AI Malaysia was important for supplying specialist expertise to evaluate fast-changing technologies and their risks.
