Global AI Sandboxes: Overview

Regulatory sandboxes provide lawmakers with real-world data and examples to improve regulation, balancing the push for innovation and consumer protection. This approach has been extended to innovation sandboxes where organizations are supported to experiment with and adopt artificial intelligence. Often this can take the form of a company testing the impacts of an incremental change to current regulations.

Sandboxes, either for innovation or regulation, have been set up by countries at the national, state or local level. They can be found worldwide and will likely become increasingly available to organizations that wish to take advantage of them. Notably, the EU AI Act’s Article 57 mandates the use of AI sandboxes in member states. In the following table, the EU is represented as a bloc. In the U.S. AI Action Plan, the Trump administration supports the creation of AI regulatory sandboxes throughout the U.S. to support AI innovation.

This chart provides an overview of state and country innovation and regulation sandboxes, with information including status, jurisdictional level, type and context.

The IAPP additionally published an article on how different jurisdictions approach AI regulatory sandboxes.