BEIJING: All new artificial intelligence (AI) products developed in China will be required to undergo a “security assessment” before being released to the public, a sweeping new draft law by the country’s internet regulator showed Tuesday (Apr 11).
“Before providing services to the public that use generative AI products, a security assessment shall be applied for through national internet regulatory departments,” the draft law, released by the Cyberspace Administration of China, reads.
The draft law – dubbed “Administrative Measures for Generative Artificial Intelligence Services” – aims to ensure “the healthy development and standardised application of generative AI technology”, it read.
AI-generated content, it continued, must “reflect core socialist values, and must not contain content on subversion of state power”.
It must also not contain, among other things, “terrorist or extremist propaganda”, “ethnic hatred” or “other content that may disrupt economic and social order.”
The proposed regulations come after a slew of Chinese tech giants, including Baidu, SenseTime and Alibaba, showed off in recent weeks their new artificial intelligence models which can power applications ranging from chatbots to image generators.
They also come as several governments are considering how to mitigate the dangers of the emerging technology, which has experienced a boom in investment and consumer popularity in recent months after the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Rapid advancements in AI have stoked global alarm over the technology’s potential for disinformation and misuse, with deepfake images and people shown mouthing things they never said.
ChatGPT is unavailable in China, but the American software is gaining a base of Chinese users who use virtual private networks to get around the ban, deploying it to write essays and cram for exams.
China has announced ambitious plans to become a global leader in the field of AI by 2030, and consultancy group McKinsey estimates the sector could add about US$600 billion every year to China’s gross domestic product by then.
Domestic efforts to develop competing products have faltered, however, hamstrung by Beijing’s strict censorship and a US squeeze on chip imports.