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Jordan Put an Enforceable AI Disclosure Duty Inside Its Digital Media Bylaw

Regulation No. 13 of 2026, the Digital Media Regulation Bylaw, was published in Official Gazette No. 6046 on April 23, 2026 and entered into force on May 23, 2026. Article 18 sets the terms on which licensed and accredited operators may use AI, and it starts with a duty to tell the audience. This is a sectoral media rule, not a general AI act.

By Anthony Guerriero  ·  Reviewed by Anthony Guerriero  ·  Published August 3, 2026  ·  Updated August 3, 2026  ·  Enacted regulation

Key facts

Regulatory briefing

Instrument

Regulation No. 13 of 2026, the Digital Media Regulation Bylaw, secondary legislation made under Article 32 of Law No. 26 of 2015 and Article 50 of Law No. 8 of 1998

Authority

Media Commission of Jordan, under the Minister of Government Communication; issued by King Abdullah II on the decision of the Council of Ministers

Jurisdiction

Jordan, applying to persons licensed by or accredited with the Media Commission

Status

Enacted and in force

Bindingness

Binding law. Article 24 applies the penalties in the parent laws to any violation of the bylaw

Effective date

May 23, 2026, with a ninety-day regularisation window for those required to be licensed under Article 19(g)

Primary source

Official Gazette No. 6046, April 23, 2026, pages 1671 to 1685

What Article 18 actually says

The AI content of this bylaw sits in one article and one definition, and both are worth reading closely because the drafting is more specific than the summaries suggest. Article 18 opens with a permission, then converts that permission into a set of conditions.

One note on citation form before the text. Jordanian bylaws letter their paragraphs with Arabic letters rather than numbers. I use the corresponding Latin letters in the same order throughout this entry, so Article 18(a) is the paragraph lettered alif in the gazette, 18(b) is ba, 18(c) is jim, 18(d) is dal, and Article 19(g) is the paragraph lettered zay. If you check the PDF, match on position rather than on the Latin letter.

The enacted text, from page 1681 of the gazette:

المادة 18 - أ - للمرخص له أو الحاصل على الاعتماد من الهيئة استخدام تقنيات الذكاء الاصطناعي أو ما في حكمها في أنشطة الإعلام الرقمي شريطة أن لا يخالف ذلك التشريعات ذوات العلاقة وقيم المجتمع الجوهرية والنظام العام والآداب العامة.
ب- يلتزم المرخص له أو الحاصل على الاعتماد من الهيئة بما يلي:-
1- الإفصاح للجمهور بوضوح وفي مكان بارز أو عبر التنويه السمعي عن استخدام تقنيات الذكاء الاصطناعي في إنتاج المحتوى الإعلامي الرقمي أو أي جزء منه.Regulation No. 13 of 2026, Article 18, Official Gazette No. 6046, April 23, 2026, page 1681

In plain English, and the translation here is mine rather than an official one: a licensee or a person accredited by the Commission may use artificial intelligence techniques or their equivalent in digital media activities, provided that doing so does not contravene the relevant legislation, the core values of society, public order and public morals. The licensee or accredited person must then disclose to the public, clearly and in a prominent place or by audible notice, the use of AI techniques in producing digital media content or any part of it.

The rest of Article 18 continues in the same register. Sub-paragraph (b)(2) requires respect for individuals' privacy and explicit consent before their personal data is used, modified, employed or generated in AI operations, consistent with the legislation in force. Sub-paragraph (b)(3) requires observance of the relevant governing legislation and policies when using AI. Paragraph (c) prohibits using AI to produce fake or misleading digital media content, inciting content, hate speech, false information or content contrary to public order and morals, and prohibits infringing the intellectual property rights of any party. Paragraph (d) requires observance of international agreements to which the Kingdom is a party.

Two drafting details are worth flagging for anyone who read the consultation draft rather than the gazette. The enacted permission attaches to digital media activities, and it adds public order to the list of limits. The disclosure duty is enacted as sub-paragraph (b)(1), a numbered item inside paragraph (b), rather than as paragraph (b) itself. The enacted text also addresses the person holding accreditation from the Commission in different words from the draft. If your file cites the consultation version, re-cite it against the gazette.

The definition is doing real work

Article 2 supplies a defined term, and in a licensing instrument the definition is usually where the scope fight happens. The bylaw defines artificial intelligence in media as the use of intelligent systems and algorithms capable of learning, generation, analysis, prediction, recommendation and process automation, in the production, distribution and analysis of media content, using artificial intelligence techniques and robotics.

Read that list against a normal media operation and the reach is wider than the phrase AI content suggests. Generation is there, so a synthetic voiceover or a written draft is covered. But so are analysis, prediction and recommendation, which is the language of a ranking or personalisation system, and process automation, which is the language of a publishing pipeline. Distribution and analysis of media content are named alongside production.

I would be careful about how far to push that. The disclosure duty in 18(b)(1) is written against production of content or any part of it, so an automated distribution stack is not obviously something you must label on the page. The definition and the duty are not co-extensive, and a supervisor could reasonably read the duty narrowly. What the breadth of the definition does mean is that when the Commission asks whether you use AI in media, the honest answer for most publishers is yes, and the conversation starts from there.

The consent limb repays a second reading too. It is not written as a general data protection clause. It reaches personal data that is used, modified, employed or generated in AI operations. Generated is the interesting verb. A synthetic likeness or a synthesised voice of a real person is squarely inside that wording, and the bylaw asks for explicit consent before the operation, not for a takedown afterwards.

Who is inside the perimeter

This is the question that decides whether the bylaw is your problem. The obligations in Article 18 are addressed to the licensee or the person holding accreditation from the Commission. They are not addressed to the world.

The bylaw builds a split between mandatory licensing and optional accreditation. Digital publishing and digital advertising businesses, digital audiovisual broadcasters and digital media-broadcast service providers fall in the licensed population. So do professional digital content creators, influencers included, where the activity they are carrying on requires a licence, for example advertising, promotion or production. Individuals publishing purely personal content on social platforms are excluded. Digital tools belonging to media institutions that were already licensed before entry into force are not required to be separately licensed, though they may be voluntarily accredited.

That structure is the reason I would not describe this as Jordan regulating artificial intelligence. It is Jordan regulating licensed media, and using the licence as the hook for an AI duty. The practical consequence is that a US model vendor selling into Jordan is generally not the addressee. The Jordanian publisher, broadcaster, agency or creator who uses that vendor's output is. If you are the vendor, your exposure is contractual and reputational rather than direct: your customer now owes a labelling duty and a consent duty that your product either helps them meet or quietly defeats.

For a US advertiser or brand, the same logic routes the risk to the agency and the creator. If you are running influencer campaigns into the Jordanian market and the creative is synthetic in whole or in part, the disclosure obligation lands on the licensed creator, and it lands as a condition of the licence they need in order to take your money.

How this gets enforced

The enforcement design is worth understanding because it is the opposite of the pattern most US readers expect. There is no fine schedule in the bylaw.

Article 24 provides that the penalties set out in the Law, the Press and Publications Law and all related legislation apply to anyone who violates the bylaw's provisions. Sanctions therefore arrive by cross-reference to the parent statutes rather than from the bylaw itself. Anyone quoting a fine figure from the text of Regulation No. 13 has misread it. The instrument does contain a table of amounts in Jordanian dinars at Article 22, but those are service fees, not penalties, and presenting them as fines is a straightforward error.

The second enforcement lever is procedural and, in my view, the more consequential one. Under Article 19(c)(2), employees of the Media Commission designated by the Director hold judicial-police powers to record violations of the bylaw. That is not a complaints inbox. It means the supervisor can make a formal record of a breach through its own staff, which shortens the distance between an unlabelled synthetic clip and a file that goes somewhere.

The third lever is the licence itself, and it is the one that actually disciplines behaviour. Article 19(g) required persons who must be licensed under the bylaw to regularise their status within ninety days of entry into force. Running from May 23, 2026, that window closes in the second half of August 2026. Once the licensing population is settled, the AI duties in Article 18 are conditions attached to a permission that the Commission grants and can revisit. Compliance leverage of that kind does not depend on the size of a fine.

What to do about it, and what not to conclude

If you have Jordanian media exposure, the work is small and concrete, and it is mostly about evidence rather than technology.

First, establish whether any entity in your chain is licensed by or accredited with the Media Commission. That is a yes or no question and it decides everything else. Second, if the answer is yes, find every point in the content pipeline where AI touches production, including partial production, because 18(b)(1) reaches content or any part of it. Third, decide what the disclosure looks like in practice: the text asks for clarity, and for either a prominent place or an audible notice, which tells you a buried line in a terms page is not what the drafter had in mind. Fourth, build the consent record for any use of a real person's data or likeness in an AI operation, and build it before the operation, because that is how 18(b)(2) is written.

Fifth, and least glamorous, write down who owns this. In most media organisations the AI use sits with production or with an outside agency while the licence sits with legal or with the editor. That gap is where an unlabelled asset gets published.

Now the limits. This is a sectoral media-licensing bylaw containing one AI article and one definition. It is not a comprehensive or horizontal AI framework, and it should not be filed as Jordan's AI law. Whether Jordan has designated a national AI regulator or adopted a horizontal AI act is not something the national sources reviewed for this entry establish either way, and I am not going to infer an absence from silence.

The broader point for a US compliance function is about direction of travel rather than about Jordan. A media-licensing bylaw is a fast instrument. It reached the gazette in eighteen days from the Cabinet decision and was in force thirty days later. Jurisdictions that want an AI labelling duty in force quickly do not need a horizontal statute; they can attach the duty to a licence they already issue. If your market map only tracks comprehensive AI bills, it will keep missing rules like this one, and rules like this one are the ones that bind your local partners first.

Last verified: August 3, 2026 against the primary sources listed above.