It is hard for regulation to keep up with the rapid development of new technologies. This is partly due to the lack of specialist technical expertise among lawmakers, and partly due to the multi-year timescales for developing, proposing and negotiating complex regulations that lag behind technological advances. Generative AI has been a particularly egregious example of this situation but is by no means the first. On the other hand, technical standardisation in global fora such as ISO and IEC generally does not suffer from a lack of specialist technical expertise. In many cases, it is also able to work on somewhat faster timescales than regulation. Therefore, many jurisdictions have developed synergistic approaches that combine the respective strengths of regulation and standardisation to complement each other.