ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND PHARMACEUTICAL ADVERTISING IN TANZANIA: AN EXAMINATION OF THE READINESS OF THE REGULATORY FRAMEWORK
The increasing use of artificial intelligence in digital advertising has introduced new regulatory challenges in the pharmaceutical sector. Artificial intelligence can generate and modify written advertisements, images, videos, voices and personalized promotional messages with considerable speed and scale. These capabilities create legal questions concerning the authenticity of promotional information, responsibility for advertising content, regulatory approval, consumer protection and the monitoring of advertisements after approval. This article examines the readiness of the Tanzanian legal framework to regulate artificial intelligence-driven pharmaceutical advertising. The article adopts a doctrinal legal research approach based on legislation, subsidiary legislation, regulatory materials, international standards and relevant scholarly literature. Particular attention is given to the Tanzania Medicines and Medical Devices Act, the Tanzania Medicines and Medical Devices (Control of Human and Veterinary Medicines Promotion) Regulations, the Personal Data Protection Act and the Electronic and Postal Communications framework. The article establishes that Tanzania has a substantial legal foundation for regulating pharmaceutical advertising. The framework prohibits false and misleading pharmaceutical advertisements and requires promotional activities to obtain regulatory approval. In addition, Tanzania has expressly recognized artificial intelligence-generated content within the online-content regulatory framework. However, the existing framework does not yet provide sufficiently detailed rules addressing AI-generated and AI-modified pharmaceutical advertisements, synthetic professional representations, disclosure of AI involvement, automated targeting and continuous monitoring of modified advertisements. The article argues that the principal regulatory concern is therefore not the complete absence of law, but limited technological specificity and coordination between existing regulatory regimes. It recommends clearer rules on AI-generated pharmaceutical advertising, responsibility and traceability of promotional content, stronger post-approval monitoring, regulatory cooperation and development of specialized technical capacity within the relevant institutions.
Keywords: Artificial intelligence, pharmaceutical advertising, pharmaceutical regulation, consumer protection, Tanzania
