Planalto Races to Pass an AI Legal Framework and Big-Tech Competition Bills This Year
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government is racing to push artificial-intelligence and big-tech competition rules through Congress before the year ends, O Globo reported. Officials see a narrowing window in the current legislature, arguing that a more right-leaning future Congress would be less receptive, and they want votes while political capital from the recent election still holds.
One priority is the Marco Legal da Inteligência Artificial, already approved by the Senate and awaiting a report from Chamber rapporteur Aguinaldo Ribeiro. The draft would impose transparency duties, liability for harms, limits on using copyrighted material to train models, and fines of up to R$50 million, with possible suspension of systems. Digital policy secretary João Brant tied the bill to digital sovereignty and to curbing value extraction by large platforms from Brazilian content and users.
In parallel, the Finance Ministry is backing an antitrust bill for systemically important digital platforms, ready for a Chamber floor vote under rapporteur Aliel Machado. Designation would start with revenue thresholds of R$5 billion in Brazil and R$50 billion globally, then qualitative tests of dependence and data control, giving Cade clearer ex-ante tools than today’s after-the-fact cases. Neither text regulates speech content; Brasília wants to avoid a censorship fight while still answering Meta’s disputed role in the campaign.
What it means in practice
The package lands after court and regulator skirmishes such as a São Paulo injunction barring Meta from scraping news sites to train AI and ANPD sandbox reports on AI and data-protection tests. Companies that scrape Brazilian publishers or run opaque ranking systems now face a legislative as well as a judicial track, while Cade would gain earlier leverage over marketplaces and messaging giants.
What to watch is whether Ribeiro files his AI report in time for a December vote, whether Hugo Motta schedules the competition bill after the leaders’ meeting, and how platforms lobby to narrow duties without killing the bills outright.