Asian markets fell sharply on Friday amid fears that Democrats in the United States would tighten regulations on artificial intelligence. The sell-off followed a wave of selling in US technology stocks the previous day. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index dropped 3.9 percent. Japan's Nikkei 225 Index posted a 5.7 percent fall, one of the steepest daily declines of the past year. In South Korea, losses in the Kospi Index deepened to 8.8 percent, which triggered a circuit breaker. China's Shenzhen 300 Index slipped by a comparatively smaller 1.5 percent. The back-to-back declines show how heavily Asian exchanges were hit after Wall Street's AI-related losses.