Brazil’s PL 2338/2023: Approved by the Senate, Stalled in the Chamber

Short answer: Brazil does not have an AI law. PL 2338/2023 — the bill most governance decks are pointing at when they colour Brazil in — was approved by the Federal Senate’s plenary on 10 December 2024 and sent to the Chamber of Deputies for the second-house review that Article 65 of the Brazilian Constitution requires. As of this guide’s research pass, the Chamber’s own open-data record for the proposition (id 2487262) still shows situação “Aguardando Parecer” — awaiting an opinion — with its most recent tramitação entry dated 2 September 2026. That is roughly 21 months since the Senate vote and about 18 months since the Chamber formally received the text, with no reported committee opinion in the record. Nothing in PL 2338/2023 is in force, and nothing in it creates an obligation for anyone today. The honest story here is the stall, not the text. CASRAI’s own NIKOLAI project — an independent, unendorsed reference dictionary of frontier-AI-safety elements — has an element built for exactly this shape of object, the Roadmap Item; the connection is set out below.

What the Two Chambers’ Records Actually Say

Both the Senate and the Chamber publish machine-readable records for this bill, and they are the only sources this guide relies on for procedural facts.

On the Senate side, matéria 157233 records PL 2338/2023 as authored by Senador Rodrigo Pacheco (PSD/MG) and presented on 3 May 2023, under the short ementa “Dispõe sobre o uso da Inteligência Artificial.” Its last recorded decision is “Aprovada pelo Plenário” on 10 December 2024, with the destination given as the Chamber of Deputies.

On the Chamber side, proposition id 2487262 carries a different, longer ementa — the one attached to the text as it arrived from the Senate: “Dispõe sobre o desenvolvimento, o fomento e o uso ético e responsável da inteligência artificial com base na centralidade da pessoa humana” (“provides for the development, promotion and ethical and responsible use of artificial intelligence on the basis of the centrality of the human person”). The earliest tramitação entry in that record is dated 17 March 2025: receipt by the MESA of Ofício nº 235/2025 from the Federal Senate, submitting the bill for revision under Article 65 of the Constitution. So there is already a three-month gap between the Senate vote and the Chamber’s own receipt date.

Since then the situação field has not changed. Every entry this guide reviewed — from March 2025 through the 2 September 2026 entry that is currently the most recent — carries the same situação, “Aguardando Parecer.” None of them records a parecer being presented, read or voted.

Atomic Facts

What the Approved Text Proposes — At the Level the Sources Support

This guide deliberately does not summarise PL 2338 clause by clause. The version that matters is the substitutive text the Senate approved, and clause-level claims about it circulate widely in secondary commentary without being checkable against the records used here. What the primary records do support is the bill’s declared orientation and its indexed subject matter.

The orientation is in the ementa the Chamber recorded: human-centred, framed as development, promotion and ethical and responsible use rather than prohibition. The subject matter is in the Senate’s own indexação of the matéria, which lists, among other topics, classificação and riscos (classification and risks), direitos e garantias fundamentais, direitos humanos, democracia, governança corporativa and governança pública, responsabilidade civil, supervisão, fiscalização and pena disciplinar. That is the indexing of a risk-tiered, rights-anchored framework with civil-liability and supervisory machinery — which is the level of description the record actually warrants.

What follows from that, and what does not: it is fair to say the approved Senate text is structured around risk classification and fundamental-rights protection with a supervisory and penalty apparatus. It is not fair — on these sources — to assert specific risk-tier names, specific thresholds, specific penalty amounts, or a named enforcement authority, and this guide does not. Anyone who needs clause-level detail should read the approved Senate text itself rather than a summary of a summary.

Why It Stalled, As Far As the Record Shows

The Chamber constituted a dedicated Comissão Especial for the bill — sigla PL233823, whose formal name is the special committee “destinada a proferir parecer ao Projeto de Lei nº 2338, de 2023, do Senado Federal.” Its record shows real activity in its first months: on 27 May 2025 the committee approved a long run of requerimentos scheduling public hearings and a seminar in São Paulo, with invitee lists spanning the national data-protection authority, academic computer scientists, industry associations, civil-society organisations and copyright specialists. That is a committee doing work, not a committee that never met.

What the record does not show, at any point, is a parecer. And the 2026 entries show something else instead: a steady stream of apensações — newer AI bills being formally attached to PL 2338’s tree so they travel with it. The entries this guide reviewed include a large batch notified on 19 March 2026 and further attachments through May, June and September 2026; the most recent entry, dated 2 September 2026, is itself a “Notificação de Apensação.” Each apensação enlarges what the eventual parecer has to reconcile. The mechanism that keeps the file coherent is also, in practice, a mechanism that makes the opinion harder to write — though the record states the attachments, not a motive, and this guide does not claim to know why no opinion has been delivered.

Why This Matters: “Brazil Has an AI Law” Is Wrong

Jurisdiction slides and compliance matrices routinely list Brazil alongside the EU, Korea and China as a jurisdiction with comprehensive AI legislation. On the record above, that is simply incorrect, and the error is a specific and recognisable one: treating a one-chamber approval as enactment. In a bicameral system, Senate approval of a Senate-originated bill is the halfway point, not the finish line — the Chamber can approve it, amend it (sending it back), or leave it awaiting an opinion indefinitely, which is what has happened.

The useful contrast inside this cluster is two-sided. Canada’s AIDA, covered in what AIDA would have required and why it died, is a bill that ended — it fell with the prorogation of Parliament, so there is a clean answer to “is it law?” (no, and it never will be in that form). PL 2338 is the opposite failure mode for anyone building a compliance map: it is alive, it is the leading vehicle, more bills keep being attached to it — and it still binds nobody. A live-but-frozen bill is harder to represent honestly on a map than a dead one, because there is no event to point at.

The third comparison is timing. South Korea’s National Assembly passed its AI Basic Act in December 2024, the same month Brazil’s Senate approved PL 2338 — and Korea’s act took effect in January 2026 while Brazil’s bill was still awaiting a committee opinion. Two comparable legislative milestones in the same month, one now in force and one not, is the clearest available demonstration that “passed a chamber in December 2024” carries no information about legal effect. For where Brazil sits against everyone else, see CASRAI’s jurisdiction map of AI regulation around the world and the ten-jurisdiction comparison of frontier AI law, neither of which currently carries a Brazil row — for the reason this page exists.

What This Means for Research Administration

There is a real research-administration angle here, and it is narrower than it first looks. The Chamber’s own keyword indexing for the proposition includes FNDCT (Brazil’s National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development), pesquisa, the Política Nacional de Educação Digital, and letramento algorítmico — so the text reaches research funding and digital-literacy policy, not only commercial AI deployment. Brazilian universities, their research offices, and international partners with Brazilian collaborators all have a genuine interest in where it lands.

The practical consequence today, though, runs the other way: a sponsored-programs office cannot write a compliance clause against PL 2338, because there is nothing to comply with. Subaward terms, data-management plans and collaboration agreements that assert obligations under “Brazil’s AI law” are asserting something that does not exist, and an institutional AI-governance policy that lists Brazil as a regulated jurisdiction is carrying an error that will survive every review until someone checks the Chamber’s record. What is in force in Brazil and does bind research data handling is the LGPD — see CASRAI’s guide to LGPD treatment of research data and its academic and anonymised-data exemptions. The defensible posture is: track the Comissão Especial’s parecer as a watch item with a named owner, comply with the law that actually exists, and do not pre-commit contract language to a text that may be amended before it is ever voted.

Where NIKOLAI Fits

NIKOLAI is CASRAI’s own independent, unendorsed reference dictionary of frontier-AI-safety elements, live at casrai.org/nikolai and organised into ten tracks (N1–N10). One element in its N9 (Commitments and Governance) track is built for precisely the object this page describes: the Roadmap Item, which NIKOLAI defines as “a dated, non-binding future goal with a trackable status value (e.g. not met / met / slipped), published so that its completion or slippage against the stated date can be monitored independently,” verified on its own element page.

That is the right register for PL 2338 in any governance inventory. It is dated, it is public, it is non-binding today, and its status is trackable against a source of record — which is different in kind from an obligation, and should be stored in a different column. A framework that files pending bills in the same field as in-force law will misreport its own exposure; NIKOLAI’s element exists to keep those apart.

The second relevant element is the Mapping Declaration, which NIKOLAI defines as a party’s own statement that its documents or terms correspond to, satisfy, or deliberately differ from obligations in another regulatory regime. It matters here because of how NIKOLAI’s crosswalks work: every crosswalk row is a shadow mapping — CASRAI’s own reading of how a term is used — unless the organisation concerned has filed a Mapping Declaration confirming it. No Brazilian body has filed one, and there is nothing in force in Brazil to map against in any case, so NIKOLAI carries no Brazilian crosswalk row today. NIKOLAI is not referenced by, endorsed under, or affiliated with PL 2338, the Federal Senate, the Chamber of Deputies or any Brazilian authority, and this guide makes no such claim.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is PL 2338/2023 law in Brazil?

No. The Federal Senate’s plenary approved it on 10 December 2024 and sent it to the Chamber of Deputies for the second-house review Article 65 of the Constitution requires. The Chamber’s open-data record for the proposition still shows situação “Aguardando Parecer,” and no provision of the bill is in force.

What is the current status of PL 2338/2023 in the Chamber of Deputies?

Proposition id 2487262 in the Chamber’s open-data system shows situação “Aguardando Parecer,” with the most recent tramitação entry dated 2 September 2026 and recorded against the MESA. A dedicated Comissão Especial (sigla PL233823) was constituted to deliver the parecer, approved public-hearing requerimentos in May 2025, and has not delivered an opinion in the record this guide reviewed.

Why has the bill taken so long in the Chamber?

The record states what has happened rather than why. What it shows is a special committee that scheduled extensive public hearings in 2025, and a continuing stream of apensações through 2026 in which newer AI bills are attached to PL 2338’s tree, enlarging what any eventual parecer must reconcile. No motive for the delay is recorded, and none is asserted here.

What does the approved Senate text actually propose?

At the level the primary records support: a human-centred framework — the Chamber’s ementa describes development, promotion and ethical and responsible use of AI “com base na centralidade da pessoa humana” — whose indexed subject matter includes risk classification, fundamental rights, corporate and public governance, civil liability, supervision, oversight and penalties. Specific tier names, thresholds, penalty amounts and the identity of any enforcement authority are not verifiable from these sources and are not claimed here.

Should our organisation prepare for PL 2338 compliance now?

Track it; do not build to it. The text can still be amended in the Chamber, returned to the Senate, or never voted, so contract language, policies and system controls written against today’s version may be written against a text that never takes effect. Treat it as a dated watch item with a named owner, and meanwhile comply with what is actually in force in Brazil, including the LGPD.

Does NIKOLAI map PL 2338/2023?

No. NIKOLAI is CASRAI’s own independent, unendorsed dictionary; it carries no Brazilian crosswalk row, because nothing in Brazil is in force to map and no Brazilian organisation has filed a Mapping Declaration. This guide uses NIKOLAI’s Roadmap Item element as a way of describing what a pending bill is in a governance inventory — it does not assert any relationship between NIKOLAI and Brazilian law or institutions.

Related Reading

• What AIDA Would Have Required — and Why It Died
• AI Regulations Around the World: A Jurisdiction Map
• Frontier AI Law: 10 Jurisdictions Compared
• Korea’s AI Basic Act: What Took Effect in January 2026
• Brazil’s LGPD and Research Data: Academic and Anonymised-Data Exemptions
• NIKOLAI’s Track System: A Map of the Frontier AI Safety Landscape (N1-N10)
• What Is NIKOLAI? CASRAI’s Frontier-AI-Safety Dictionary Explained

Sources

• Senado Federal, Dados Abertos, matéria 157233 (PL 2338/2023): author, presentation date, ementa, indexação, and the 10 December 2024 “Aprovada pelo Plenário” decision with destination to the Chamber of Deputies.
• Câmara dos Deputados, Dados Abertos, proposição id 2487262: ementa, keywords, statusProposição (2 September 2026, MESA, “Aguardando Parecer”), and the tramitação series from the 17 March 2025 receipt onward.
• Câmara dos Deputados, Dados Abertos, órgãos: the full name of the Comissão Especial with sigla PL233823.