Reuters reviewed a confidential draft of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations' (ASEAN) "guide to AI ethics and governance," whose content has not previously been reported. In contrast to the EU's AI Act, the ASEAN "AI guide" asks companies to take countries' cultural differences into consideration and doesn’t prescribe unacceptable risk categories, according to the current version reviewed. With almost 700 million people and over a thousand ethnic groups and cultures, Southeast Asian countries have widely divergent rules governing censorship, misinformation, public content and hate speech that would likely affect AI regulation. The ASEAN guide advises companies to put in place an AI risk assessment structure and AI governance training, but leaves specifics to companies and local regulators. EU officials and lawmakers told Reuters that the bloc would continue to hold talks with Southeast Asian states to align over broader principles.

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Persons: Stephen Braim, Alexandra van Huffelen, Fanny Potkin, Supantha Mukherjee, Panu, Sam Holmes Organizations: Reuters, Association of Southeast Asian Nations, ASEAN Digital, Companies, IBM, Google, ASEAN, Technology, United States, NIST, U.S . Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards, Meta, Southeast, EU, European Commission, Thomson Locations: SINGAPORE, STOCKHOLM, Thailand, United, Southeast Asia, Japan, South Korea, Brussels, Singapore, Stockholm, Bangkok