National Artificial Intelligence Policy 2025

Summary

Pakistan's national AI policy, approved in July 2025, with six pillars from innovation and skills to a secure AI ecosystem, infrastructure and international partnerships. Its governance measures include an AI Council chaired by the IT Minister, an AI Directorate under the National Commission for Personal Data Protection to issue regulatory guidelines on generative AI, disinformation and privacy breaches, human oversight of critical AI operations in high-risk scenarios, mandatory disclosure of AI use with a public register of public-sector AI systems, lifecycle evaluations and impact assessments of high-impact systems, third-party audits with redress, and regulatory sandboxes.

Safety topics

Open question

checker: Targeted search found MoITT's own announcement of the approval (official host, HTTP 500 on the archiver, so not stored) and several press reports of Cabinet approval on 30 July 2025, one day before the 31 July date on MoITT's policies page. The record's issuing body names Cabinet approval, Issue #156

The record shows its last checked values until a maintainer decides; the decision is recorded in its history.

Status notes

MoITT's policies page lists the policy as approved on 31 July 2025 and still lists the earlier draft National Artificial Intelligence Policy of 25 June 2022 as a draft. The policy cites the UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of AI and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and is meant to work together with the draft Personal Data Protection Act, the Pakistan Cloud First Policy, the Digital Pakistan Policy and the Digital Nation Pakistan Act. Its action matrix sets most targets for 2026, including the AI Directorate under the National Commission for Personal Data Protection and an integrated regulatory sandbox for AI led by the SECP; the policy text also mentions independent oversight bodies, including an AI ethics board.

Sources

Open the official source https://moitt.gov.pk/SiteImage/Policies/National%20AI%20Policy.pdf

Secondary source: https://moitt.gov.pk/Policies

Local copy

Verification

History

1. 2026-10-18verification.level: A → B — level computed from the evidence by tools/pipeline.py2026-10-18-recheck-south-asia-1 · Claude Code (claude-opus-5-5)
2. 2026-10-18notes: The MoITT policies page lists it as 'Approved' with an approval date of 31 July → MoITT's policies page lists the policy as approved on 31 July 2025 and still lis — version 1's statement about MoITT's legislation list rests on no stored file and was removed; the 2022 draft's listing, the related instruments, the 2026 action-matrix targets and the ethics board added2026-10-18-recheck-south-asia-1 · Claude Code (claude-opus-5-5)
3. 2026-10-18summary: Pakistan's first approved national AI policy. Its governance and safety content → Pakistan's national AI policy, approved in July 2025, with six pillars from inno — 'Pakistan's first approved national AI policy' rests on no stored file and was dropped; the six pillars, the AI Directorate's placement under the NCPDP and the regulatory sandboxes made explicit; the ethics board moved to notes because the policy mentions it as a kind of oversight body rather than a measure it establishes2026-10-18-recheck-south-asia-1 · Claude Code (claude-opus-5-5)

Related records

Islamabad AI Declaration Pakistan · Published (non-binding, current)

UNESCO AI Ethics Recommendation UNESCO · Published (non-binding, current)

Citation

Ministry of Information Technology & Telecommunication (MoITT); approved by the Federal Cabinet. National Artificial Intelligence Policy 2025. 2025-07-31. https://moitt.gov.pk/SiteImage/Policies/National%20AI%20Policy.pdf. Status: Published (non-binding, current); verified 2026-10-18 (level B). Local copy archive/PK-01/2026-10-11/official.pdf retrieved 2026-10-11 14:02:05 UTC, SHA-256 0b32ffead0868dc6fe37a48092c47c2dc505a6a8266a81f482d510ba36bfad3c. Every AI Policy Ever, version 1.18 (snapshot 2026-10-18), record PK-01.

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