New Italian Law on AI: a general framework

Italy has officially entered the age of artificial intelligence regulation. After more than a year of adjustments, the long-awaited Italian law on AI has finally been approved – marking a turning point in the country’s digital governance landscape.

The legislative journey of this law has been anything but linear. The story began on 23 April 2024, when the Council of Ministers approved the first draft – even before the EU Council gave its final green light to the AI Act. That early move led to several misalignments between the Italian draft and the EU framework. Allegedly, the European Commission itself pointed out these inconsistencies, pushing the government to reconsider its approach.

In 2025, the law took shape through a series of key parliamentary steps: first approved by the Senate in March, then amended by the Chamber of Deputies, and finally adopted in its definitive form by the Senate on 17 September, incorporating the Chamber’s modifications.

The result, Law No.132, was published in the official Gazette on 23 September and entered into force on  10 October 2025.

The aim of the Italian Legislator seems clear: trying to align the text with the EU AI Act while also carving out Italy’s position in the broader European regulatory debate. But will the Italian Law on AI really move in this direction? Actually, adopting a national law that mirrors standards already set by a directly applicable EU Regulation appears more political than legally necessary. The Legislator’s intent seems to be to affirm national specificities without meaningfully diverging from European standards – an option that would risk non-compliance and potential infringement procedures.

Substantially, the Italian Law on AI, which counts 28 articles divided into 6 sections, can be broadly divided into 3 main aspects concerning the new digital framework posed by AI: national security, healthcare and copyright law. However, the following analysis will focus only on Section IV, and specifically Art. 25, of the text, which concerns the relationship between AI and Italian Copyright Law.

The amendments to the Italian Copyright Law under Art. 25

Section IV of the Italian Artificial Intelligence Law only includes Art. 25, which provides for two significant amendments to Law No. 633 of 1941 – Italy’s longstanding Copyright Act (commonly referred to as the “LDA”) – aimed at addressing the growing challenges posed by AI in the realm of copyright. The first amendment under Art. 25 revises Art. 1, paragraph 1 of the LDA as follow:

“Works of “human” intellectual creation of a creative nature are protected under this law, including those belonging to literature, music, figurative arts, architecture, theatre, and cinematography, regardless of the mode or form of expression“, even when created with the aid of artificial intelligence tools, provided they are the result of the author’s intellectual effort” (new wording in bold); (author’s translator).

From a substantive standpoint, the revision is remarkably straightforward as it underscores the principle of human authorship: authorship is inherently linked to human intellect and personality. Consequently, a work created with AI tools, provided it is still the result of a creative and original human intellectual effort, would be protected under Italian Copyright Law.

Through this approach, the Italian Legislator aligns itself with the longstanding anthropocentric tradition of copyright law as interpreted through the lens of the Berne Convention and in the light of the EU copyright law and EU copyright jurisprudential framework.

Indeed, while the former does not contain an explicit reference to the requirement that the author must be human (see, for example, the InfoSoc Directive framework, Art. 2(1) of the Software Directive and similarly Art. 4(1) of the Database Directive); the latter has always tended in that direction with several CJEU rulings with its essential connection between  human authorship, originality, intellectual effort and copyrightable creation (see Infopaq, Painer and Cofemel case law). In particular, in the Painer case the Court also examines the relationship between the author and the technological tools used in the creation of the work, reaching the conclusion that copyright protection applies only to those creations in which the author’s personality is present and expressed, while excluding cases where the work is solely the result of a technical process. Thus, why not extend this reasoning to works created through AI tools, namely to AI-assisted outputs?

To a certain extent, this appears to be the objective of the Italian Legislator, clearly stated in black and white in the new Art. 1 of the Italian Copyright Law.

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