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

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly recognized as a crucial issue in political discourse, yet comparative research on how political perspectives on AI vary across countries, particularly following ChatGPT's public debut, remains limited. This paper presents a cross-national analysis of AI framing in parliamentary debates, exploring their evolution from 2014 to 2024 in the US Congress, EU Parliament, Parliament of Singapore, and Swiss Federal Assembly. Grounded in framing theory and insights from comparative political economy, we assemble a novel data set of parliamentary speech transcripts and employ a mixed-methods approach, combining natural language processing with qualitative content analysis, to identify framing patterns. Our findings reveal a steep surge in AI discussions across all legislatures after ChatGPT's 2022 release, propelled predominantly by ethics and regulation concerns. We also identify distinct national priorities: the US emphasizes defense, Singapore links AI to economic innovation and workforce development, the EU focuses on ethical governance, and Switzerland shows limited but regulation-centric engagement. These divergences highlight how distinct national and geopolitical priorities shape local AI policy debates. We conclude with a discussion of implications for framing research amid technological disruption.