New Report: Artificial Intelligence & Freedom of Expression in Vietnam

The report chapter reveals that AI regulation in Vietnam functions mainly to extend the state’s existing control over speech.

Trịnh Hữu Long, Executive Director at Legal Initiatives for Vietnam, joined The Future of Free Speech to complete a report titled “That Violates My Policies”: AI Laws, Chatbots, and the Future of Expression.

Published in October 2026 by The Future of Free Speech, this report examines artificial intelligence (AI) legislation, bills, policies, and case law in the European Union, Nigeria, Peru, Sweden, Türkiye, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Vietnam. It investigates how public and private governance of generative AI shapes the space for free expression and access to information across election and political content, hate speech, defamation, explicit content, copyright, and measures that empower freedom of expression, such as policies supporting linguistic diversity, media literacy, and open-source development.

Trịnh Hữu Long authored the chapter on Vietnam.

Key Findings on Vietnam:

Vietnam’s Soviet-style legal system treats AI as both a potential threat and an opportunity to its market-Leninist authoritarian system. AI regulation in Vietnam functions mainly to extend the state’s existing control over speech:

• Vietnam passed its first AI law in 2025, alongside an updated cybersecurity law, both using vague language to ban AI-generated content deemed a threat to national security or public order. These broad terms give law enforcement wide discretion to apply them to criticism of the regime or government officials.
• Enforcement is already underway: Two exiled dissidents were sentenced in absentia to seventeen years in prison, partly for AI-generated videos of leaders, and fines have followed AI-generated fake news.
• A national identity app used by most of the population is to be integrated with AI, drawing on citizens’ communications data, with no independent oversight.
• Provisions on minority language support are largely symbolic.

Full Chapter on Vietnam

Media Contact:
Trịnh Hữu Long
Executive Director, LIV
info@liv.ngo