From access to AI resources and sovereign regulation to copyright, industrial adoption and finance, the New Delhi summit has turned artificial intelligence into a larger battle over who gets to shape the rules of the next technology era.

Artificial intelligence has moved from being a technology issue to becoming a question of global power.

At the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi, the grouping put AI firmly inside its wider push to give emerging and developing economies a greater voice in global governance. The New Delhi Declaration calls for wider access to AI resources, safer and more trustworthy systems, greater international cooperation and continued implementation of the BRICS framework on global AI governance.

Taken together with the bloc’s 2025 position on artificial intelligence, the message emerging from BRICS is increasingly difficult to miss: developing economies do not want the rules of the AI era to be written exclusively elsewhere.

The New Delhi Declaration does not create a common BRICS AI law. It does not establish a supranational regulator or impose a shared regulatory model on member countries.

What it does is potentially more consequential over the long term.

BRICS is trying to establish a political position on who participates in AI governance, who gets access to the technology and infrastructure behind it, how intellectual property should be treated, and how much freedom countries should retain to regulate AI within their own borders.

For the Global South, this is increasingly becoming a fight over participation in the AI economy itself.

AI Access Is Now A Geopolitical Question

One of the strongest elements of the New Delhi Declaration is its focus on access.

BRICS leaders recognised AI as an opportunity for economic growth and sustainable development, but also called for international cooperation to improve accessibility to AI resources, particularly for countries of the Global South.

The language matters because the biggest divide in artificial intelligence may eventually be about more than who has the best chatbot.

Building sophisticated AI systems requires enormous computing capacity, advanced semiconductors, cloud infrastructure, data, talent, research institutions and capital. Much of that infrastructure remains concentrated among a relatively small number of countries and technology companies.

That creates the risk of a new digital divide.

Countries may be able to use AI products without having meaningful control over the infrastructure, models, data ecosystems or standards underpinning them.

BRICS is attempting to put that imbalance on the international agenda.

The declaration calls for greater accessibility to AI resources while simultaneously emphasising safety, security, inclusiveness, reliability, energy efficiency, scientific innovation and trustworthy AI.

This places development alongside safety as a major part of the governance conversation.

For countries that are still building their AI ecosystems, the question is not simply how artificial intelligence should be regulated. It is whether they will have sufficient resources to participate competitively in the first place.

A Different Vision Of AI Governance

The New Delhi Declaration commits BRICS countries to implementing the Leaders’ Statement on the Global Governance of Artificial Intelligence adopted at the 2025 BRICS Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

That earlier framework offers a clearer picture of the bloc’s emerging philosophy.

It argues that AI governance should operate within national regulatory frameworks, respect state sovereignty and give developing countries meaningful participation in global decision-making.

It also places the United Nations at the centre of international AI governance.

This is an important distinction from the prospect of a single global regulator determining how AI should operate across different countries.

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guing for international cooperation without removing governments’ ability to develop regulatory systems based on their own economic, social and political circumstances.

For India, Brazil, South Africa and other emerging economies, that approach could provide greater flexibility as they attempt to encourage AI innovation while simultaneously building safeguards.

It also reflects a larger battle taking shape in technology governance.

The countries and institutions that influence global standards today could determine how AI models are tested, how data moves across borders, what obligations developers carry, how intellectual property is protected and how emerging AI risks are addressed.

BRICS wants developing economies inside those conversations.

Copyright Enters The BRICS AI Battle

One of the most notable outcomes from New Delhi concerns intellectual property.

The declaration explicitly calls for cooperation to promote respect for intellectual property rights in digital environments, including when copyrighted material is used for AI training.

It also refers to fair remuneration for rights holders.

This puts BRICS directly into one of the most contentious debates surrounding generative AI.

Publishers, news organisations, musicians, authors, artists and other creators around the world are questioning whether AI developers should be allowed to train models on copyrighted material without permission or compensation.

The BRICS declaration does not prescribe a single licensing model or establish a common copyright regime for artificial intelligence.

But the inclusion of AI training and remuneration at a leaders’ summit is significant.

It indicates that the economic relationship between AI companies and content creators is becoming a matter of international technology policy rather than simply a series of disputes between individual companies.

The declaration also raises another issue that has received comparatively less attention: cultural representation inside AI systems.

BRICS leaders warned about the risks of knowledge, heritage and cultural values being misappropriated or misrepresented when they are insufficiently represented in datasets and AI models.

For countries with enormous linguistic, cultural and historical diversity, this is not a marginal issue.

Large AI models can only understand the world through the information on which they are trained.

If languages, communities or cultures are poorly represented in those datasets, the technology can reproduce a highly uneven picture of the world.

For India in particular, with hundreds of languages and dialects and vast regional differences, building locally relevant AI could become as much a question of cultural and linguistic representation as technological capability.

AI Moves From Chatbots To Factories

The summit also shows how the BRICS AI agenda is expanding beyond generative AI.

The New Delhi Declaration highlights the use of emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, to support a new phase of industrialisation.

The BRICS Centre for Industrial Competencies, established in cooperation with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, is intended to help manufacturing companies, including small and medium enterprises, adopt Industry 4.0 and advanced digital-production technologies.

The summit also welcomed the establishment of the India Centre for BRICS Industrial Competencies.

This brings the AI debate closer to manufacturing, supply chains and industrial competitiveness.

For emerging economies, this could ultimately be more economically significant than consumer-facing AI products.

Artificial intelligence is increasingly being deployed for predictive maintenance, quality control, demand forecasting, robotics, supply-chain optimisation, industrial design and factory automation.

The countries capable of deploying those technologies widely across their manufacturing sectors could gain an advantage in productivity.

Those that cannot may find themselves competing against increasingly automated economies.

Banks And Regulators Are Preparing For AI Too

Finance is another area where BRICS is starting to formalise discussions around artificial intelligence.

The New Delhi Declaration welcomes cooperation and the sharing of experience around cybersecurity, AI and technologies such as quantum computing in the financial sector.

It specifically recognises work examining the opportunities and risks posed by these technologies from the perspective of emerging markets and developing economies.

The language remains exploratory rather than regulatory.

There is no common BRICS framework governing the use of AI by banks, fintech companies or central banks.

But artificial intelligence is already becoming deeply embedded in financial services, from fraud detection and credit assessment to risk modelling, customer service, investment analysis and compliance.

As adoption accelerates, regulators will increasingly face similar questions around algorithmic accountability, cybersecurity, bias and systemic risk.

BRICS is creating a mechanism for those conversations to happen collectively, even if the countries involved ultimately adopt different rules.

The declaration also welcomes a discussion paper examining artificial intelligence and the green economy, further broadening the technology’s role in the bloc’s economic agenda.

China’s Open-Source Proposal Adds Another Layer

The summit’s AI story went further on its second day when Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed establishing a BRICS AI Open Source Zone.

The proposal is significant, but the distinction is important: it should not be treated as an agreed BRICS initiative at this stage.

It is a Chinese proposal, separate from the commitments jointly adopted in the New Delhi Declaration.

If it progresses, however, an open-source initiative could add another dimension to competition over the global AI ecosystem.

Open-source models have increasingly become an alternative to proprietary AI systems controlled by a small group of technology companies.

For emerging economies, access to capable open models could reduce some of the cost and dependency associated with building AI applications on closed platforms.

China’s growing strength in open AI could also give Beijing greater influence over the technological ecosystem used across developing markets.

That makes any future BRICS open-source initiative worth watching not simply as a technology project but as a geopolitical one.

What BRICS Has Not Done

For all the ambition surrounding AI in New Delhi, it is equally important to recognise what the summit did not produce.

There is no BRICS AI Act.

There is no common regulator.

There is no binding AI safety regime.

There is no single set of rules governing foundation models across member countries.

And there is no common enforcement mechanism.

The BRICS approach remains based primarily on cooperation, principles, technical discussions and nationally determined regulation.

That could prove to be either its greatest strength or its biggest weakness.

Allowing countries to maintain regulatory sovereignty makes cooperation easier between economies with very different political systems and technology markets.

But without common implementation mechanisms, sweeping declarations can struggle to translate into measurable outcomes.

The next test will therefore be practical.

Can BRICS cooperation produce shared research programmes, computing infrastructure, open-source ecosystems, interoperable technical standards, financing mechanisms, local-language AI systems or meaningful capacity building?

Or will its AI ambitions remain largely diplomatic?

The Bigger Battle Is Over Who Writes The Rules

The significance of the New Delhi summit is ultimately larger than any single AI initiative.

Artificial intelligence is becoming part of the infrastructure of the global economy.

The companies and countries that control powerful models, chips, computing infrastructure, cloud platforms, data and technical standards will wield enormous influence over the next phase of digital development.

That creates a fundamental question for emerging economies.

Do they adapt to a technological order largely designed elsewhere, or do they participate in building it?

BRICS appears to have chosen the latter.

Its vision is still incomplete, and the bloc remains far from developing a unified AI regulatory system. Member countries themselves have different commercial interests, technological capabilities and geopolitical relationships.

But New Delhi has made the direction clearer.

BRICS wants greater access to the technologies powering the AI economy. It wants national governments to retain the ability to regulate artificial intelligence according to their own priorities. It wants developing economies represented in global governance. It wants intellectual property and cultural representation addressed. And it wants AI deployed as an instrument of industrial and economic development.

That does not mean BRICS has rewritten the global technology order.

But it does mean the contest over who gets to write it is widening.

And as artificial intelligence increasingly determines economic competitiveness, information flows and technological dependence, the biggest AI question may no longer be who builds the smartest model.

It may be who gets to make the rules.

Disclaimer: All data points and statistics are attributed to published research studies and verified market research. All quotes are either sourced directly or attributed to public statements.