When Politicians Talk AI: Issue Frames in Parliamentary Debates Before and After ChatGPT

Artificial intelligence is increasingly recognized as a crucial issue in political discourse, yet there is limited comparative research on how political perspectives on AI differ across countries, particularly in the wake of ChatGPT’s public release. This paper presents a cross-national analysis of how AI is framed in parliamentary debates, examining how discussions have evolved from 2014 to 2024 in the United States, the European Union, Singapore, and Switzerland. We collect a novel dataset of official parliamentary speech transcripts and employ a mixed-methods approach that combines natural language processing techniques with qualitative analysis to identify and compare framing patterns. Our findings show not only a considerable increase in attention to AI in all four regions, particularly with respect to ethics and regulation following the release of ChatGPT, but also distinct framing patterns that reflect country-specific AI priorities and governance approaches. This analysis offers insights into the global dynamics of AI policy discourse, highlighting common trends as well as divergent approaches, which are shaped by local contexts across different political systems.