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Artificial Intelligence (AI) plays an increasingly important role in today’s societies, holding the potential to reshape entire sectors such as economics, education, and healthcare. As AI rapidly integrates into our daily lives, its potential risks and benefits are increasingly being discussed: While the technology’s efficiency-enhancing potential has been strongly emphasized, AI-driven applications such as facial recognition have sparked public controversies. News media play a pivotal role in this regard: They raise awareness of the technologies’ potential, societal implications, and ethical concerns, foster informed discussions, and help shape public attitudes toward and engagement with AI. Moreover, news coverage can drive public awareness, prompting government actions to align AI development with public values and interests. While the trajectories of discourses on AI vary across different cultural, political, and social contexts, previous research has predominantly focused on individual countries, primarily in the Global (English-speaking) North (Brause et al., forthcoming). Taking into account geo-political specificities, this study takes a cross-national comparative approach to map and analyze media constructions of AI through news coverage in China, Germany, and the United States (US) over a ten-year period (2012-2021).