As Alibaba’s Tongyi Qianwen (famous for E-commerce), Baidu’s Ernie Bot (famous for search engines), NetEase (famous for video gaming) and SenseTime (well known AI developer) and Spark Desk (iFlyTek) launched ChatGPT-like services, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the internet watchdog, earlier this month drafted new rules following concerns about the potential risks from artificial general intelligence (AGI) and the new rules demand that generative AI developers pass over their products to the Cyberspace Administration of China, with details of security protocols, and which will then be subject to security assessment before being authorised for release to the public.
State media outlet Xinhua in April 2023 stated that at the Politburo’s quarterly meeting on China’s social and economic development, it was concluded that “China must … pay attention to the development of AGI, create an ecosystem for innovation but at the same time take risk prevention into account” and must ensure that their services do not spread information that “harms national security” or “subverts state regime” and must “maintain a ‘clean and clear’ online environment”, nor promote regime subversion, violence or pornography or take actions which disrupt the economy.
Dr You Chuanman, director of the IIA Centre for Regulation and Global Governance with the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen Campus is quoted as saying “The regulators also face social and institutional pressures, and they need to show that they are carrying out responsive regulation on all these emerging issues …..They have to take action one way or another, whether it’s welcomed by the market or not.”
China’s internet regulator has already published regulations trying to restrict AI-generated content to within official Chinese narratives.