Context: Every year, Stanford University publishes an “AI Index”, an independent initiative at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) that tracks AI progress, providing a data-driven perspective on its development, adoption, and impact across time and geography.
What’s new: HAI has published the eighth edition of its AI Index Report, a mammoth 456-page document, which has revealed, among several other findings, that globally, legislative mentions of AI rose 21.3% across 75 countries since 2023, marking a ninefold increase since 2016 (AI Index Report 2025 (PDF)). In the U.S. alone, federal agencies introduced 59 AI-related regulations – more than double the number in 2023. Global cooperation on AI governance also intensified, it concluded, with organizations including the OECD, EU, U.N., and African Union releasing frameworks focused on transparency, trustworthiness, and other core responsible AI principles. Most notably, global spending on AI governance has more than tripled in the last year – up from $10 billion in 2023 to $37.3 billion in 2024.
Direct impact and wider ramifications: As concluded in the report, AI is no longer just the future – and governments and businesses are no longer debating what will happen with it, they are investing (a lot) in it. New legislation is being introduced in countries across the world every day, but in places like the U.S., for example, a lot of those bills are not getting passed. And while general global optimism around AI is on the rise, especially in Asia, many businesses in the West are remaining cautious.
HAI’s report tracked every possible new development in the AI ecosystem in 2024, with just over a dozen key highlights featured in the beginning. However, ai fray focused on the chapters concerning policy and governance and copyright (or other kinds of intellectual property) infringement. Here is a breakdown of the key updates in these areas:
Policy and governance
- AI legislative mentions: Across 75 countries, AI mentions in legislative proceedings increased by 21.3% in 2024, rising to 1,889 from 1,557 in 2023. And since 2016, the total number of AI mentions has grown more than ninefold.
- U.S. states leading the way on AI legislation: in 2024, state-level AI-related laws had risen to 131 (up from 49 in 2023 and only one in 2016). While proposed AI bills at the federal level have also increased – from 171 in 2023 to 221 in 2024 – he number passed remains low.
- AI safety coordination expanding: The first AI safety institute emerged in November 2023 in the U.S. and the U.K. following the inaugural AI Safety Summit. At the AI Seoul Summit in May 2024, additional institutes were pledged in Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Singapore, South Korea, Australia, Canada, and the European Union.
- AI infrastructure spending is rising: Canada announced a $2.4 billion AI infrastructure package, while China launched a $47.5 billion fund to boost semiconductor production, France committed $117 billion, India pledged $1.25 billion, and Saudi Arabia’s Project Transcendence includes a $100 billion investment in AI. The global focus areas that attracted the most investment in 2024 were AI infrastructure/research/governance ($37.3 billion) – up from just over 10 billion in 2023.
- Disparity in U.S.-European spending tightening: The investment gap between Europe and the U.S. widened until 2020 but has narrowed since 2021. What was also interesting here was the distribution of where this public AI investment is going in the U.S. versus Europe. While in the U.S., the report found that the majority of AI contracts have been allocated to the Department of Defense since 2013, those in Europe are more balanced, with the top funding areas being general public services, education, and health – collectively accounting for around 84% of total public AI investments in 2023.
Intellectual property risks
- Increasing concern around IP/copyright infringement: After conducting a survey of businesses across various industries, HAI found compliance and lawfulness risks (e.g., IP or copyright violations) was one of 14 risks that respondents said are relevant to their organization. Only 29% of respondents were worried about this in 2024, and this has now shot up to 56%.
- IP infringement not being mitigated: HAI’s survey also found that they were aware of a number of risks AI could pose, but they weren’t actively mitigating those risks. One of those was intellectual property infringement, for which the gap was “particularly pronounced” – 57% relevant, 38% mitigated, they wrote.
- Equitable AI educational system is key: the report warned that this will be critical for the responsible development and deployment of future technological innovations. The current AI ecosystem, it wrote, has led to “detrimental” outcomes, including mis/disinformation campaigns to influence national political outcomes, the development of AI-enabled weapons, and the infringement of copyright-protected intellectual property.
The AI Index also highlighted the numerous, major milestones that were reached in AI policy and governance in 2024, most of which were highlighted in ai fray’s own round-up in January (January 7, 2025 ai fray article), including the European Parliament passing the landmark EU AI Act (January 22, 2024 ai fray article), the European Commission AI Office’s first draft of Code of Practice for General-Purpose AI (which has now reached its third draft (March 11, 2025 ai fray article)), and the U.N. Security Council debating the use of AI in conflicts. Regarding the latter, Secretary General António Guterres emphasized that AI’s rapid evolution is outpacing current governance frameworks, potentially undermining human control over weapons systems. He called for “international guardrails” to ensure AI’s safe and inclusive use.
Some more interesting key takeaways in the report included:
- Global AI business investment reaches record high: In 2024, U.S. private AI investment grew to $109.1 billion, which was nearly 12 times that in China ($9.3 billion) and 24 times the U.K.’s $4.5 billion. Generative AI saw particularly strong momentum, attracting $33.9 billion globally in private investment—an 18.7% increase from 2023.
- U.S. and China neck and neck in global AI model race: In 2024, U.S.-based institutions produced 40 notable AI models, compared to China’s 15 and Europe’s three. While the U.S. maintains its lead in quantity, Chinese models have rapidly closed the quality gap: performance differences on major benchmarks such as MMLU and HumanEval shrank from double digits in 2023 to near parity in 2024. China still leads the way in AI patent filings and grants.
- AI optimism is rising, but deep regional divides remain: Countries like China (83%), Indonesia (80%), and Thailand (77%) see AI products and services as more beneficial than harmful. However, Canada (40%), the United States (39%), and the Netherlands (36%) are not so sure. But, since 2022, optimism has grown significantly in several previously skeptical countries, including Germany (+10%), France (+10%), Canada (+8%), Great Britain (+8%), and the United States (+4%).