State treaty on AI platforms: regulate more, advertise more

epd With an amendment to the State Media Treaty, the federal states want, among other things, to regulate information systems that are based on artificial intelligence. The new regulation is also intended to ensure that media content can be easily found on online platforms.

As the State Chancellery of Rhineland-Palatinate announced on Thursday, the draft for the new law was approved by the Broadcasting Commission on Wednesday and is scheduled to be published in October. The public hearing will then begin and will last six weeks.

The media state secretary of Rhineland-Palatinate, Torsten Welling (CDU), said that the so-called Digital Media State Treaty creates sovereignty for media and their users: “We ensure fair rules of the game so that journalistically responsible media remain visible and audible tomorrow.”

According to the State Chancellery of Rhineland-Palatinate, the federal states want to use the new state treaty to improve the refinancing of media content, promote media diversity and modernize and streamline media supervision. A comprehensive reform of media concentration law is also planned.

According to the draft, which is available to the Evangelical Press Service (epd), the states want to loosen advertising regulations for private radio and television media, among other things. In the future, advertising will no longer have to be sent in blocks and nationwide providers should be able to send regionalized advertising.

The new state treaty is referred to by the states as the “Digital Media State Treaty Part 2”, and the first key points were already presented in October 2025. In June, the Prime Ministers agreed on a draft for the first part of the Digital Media State Treaty.