Brazil regulated AI this week without using artificial intelligence in either instrument’s title. A decree and a provisional measure, signed the same October 9 and published in the same Official Gazette on the 13th, define where the model may act and at what speed the machine may operate.
The technical reading is direct: the Brazilian State stopped regulating AI as a concept and started regulating what it can do, per channel, with numbers and effective dates.
MP 1.396: rate limits written into federal law
Provisional Measure 1.396 targets phone calls. It requires the originating operator to authenticate, transit operators to preserve authentication, and the terminating one to verify before delivering. Unauthenticated calls will be blocked, and business calls will be identified with the company name and logo registered in a central numbering database funded by the operators.
The cutoff is written into the law’s body: a 15-day block for anyone exceeding a thousand calls per line or ten thousand across all lines on the same day and service, with short calls at 85% or more of the total. A short call is one not completed, dropped to voicemail, or lasting up to six seconds. Public agencies, health, security, and civil defense are excluded.
Read the quartet again: one thousand, ten thousand, eighty-five percent, six seconds. That is rate limiting written into federal law, with Anatel regulating within 60 days and part of the obligations enforceable within thirty.
Decree 13.135: the human the law guarantees
Decree 13.135, from the same day, targets consumer service. Automated systems and AI tools may be used in triage, internal distribution, and demand resolution, but cannot block or remove the real-time human service option, from 8am to 8pm, every day including weekends and holidays.
The service numbers also entered the norm: contact with a person within 20 seconds in at least 80% of calls, 5-minute maximum wait for the rest, up to 5 service levels, no advertising on hold, immediate cancellation at any level, and recordings kept for 90 days. The decree revokes the 2022 one and takes effect 20 days after publication: the window for anyone operating chatbots is already running.
What it means for agent builders
For agent builders, the governing document stops being the product’s and becomes the law. And this week’s law is specific: numbers per channel, effective dates, and the human guaranteed within hours.
Added to the ANPD’s priority map and the Legal Framework one vote away, the week drew the complete ruler: what AI may do (decree and MP), how it will be enforced (ANPD), and what the framework will be (the House). Whoever operates in Brazil reads the three together.
Conclusion
The week proved AI regulation in Brazil will not become a philosophical debate: it will become numbers in law, with deadlines and agencies.
For anyone operating AI-powered service, the plan is weeks long: measure with the law’s criteria, guarantee the human within hours, instrument the meters, and document. The ruler left the slide and entered the Official Gazette, and it has numbers.