Legal framework for artificial intelligence robots in Vietnam: current status and recommendations for improvement

The development of robots integrated with artificial intelligence (AI) offers significant opportunities to enhance labor productivity and service quality while also creating new challenges concerning safety, legal liability, and state administration. Using legal analysis combined with interdisciplinary research and comparative law, this paper evaluates Vietnam’s current legal framework for artificial intelligence robots from a product lifecycle management perspective. The findings indicate that regulations on legal liability, consumer protection, technical standards, and state administration have initially been established but remain fragmented and insufficient to address the governance requirements of highly autonomous robots. Accordingly, the paper proposes developing national technical standards and regulations, improving risk-based conformity assessment mechanisms, and establishing legal criteria to distinguish artificial intelligence robots from conventional intelligent robots, thereby clearly determining the responsibilities of the relevant parties.