On 10 July 2023, the Cybersecurity Administration of China (“CAC”), alongside six other PRC government departments,[1] jointly released the Interim Measures for the Administration of Generative Artificial Intelligence Services (生成式人工智能服务管理暂行办法, “Generative AI Measures”), which will come into effect on 15 August 2023.
The Generative AI Measures have been published following the release of the Measures on the Administration of Generative Artificial Intelligence Services (Public Comment Draft) (生成式人工智能服务管理办法（征求意见稿）), on 11 April 2023 (“Draft Measures”). Compared with the Draft Measures, the requirements of the Generative AI Measures seem softer and more business/innovation friendly.
Who will the Generative AI Measures apply to?
Any entity, organization or individual that provides services that generate any text, images, audios, videos or other content to the general public in mainland China using “generative AI technology”, whether through APIs or other means, (“Generative AI Services”) will be subject to the Generative AI Measures. “Generative AI technology” is defined to include any models and relevant technology that can generate text, images, audio, videos, or other content.
As a result, Baidu’s ERNIE bot, Alibaba’s Tongyi Qianwen, and a number of other generative AI chatbots available in China will need to comply with the Generative AI Measures. However, anyone researching, developing, and using generative AI technology without offering Generative AI Services to the general public in China will not fall within the scope of the Generative AI Measures.
Entities established outside of China are also covered. Article 20 expressly provides that the CAC, in conjunction with other PRC regulators, will take necessary technical and other measures against Generative AI Services that are provided to users in China from the offshore level (i.e., via servers and data hosted outside of China) that violate the Generative AI Measures or other PRC laws and regulations. In practice, we expect this will most often result in non-compliant Generative AI Services being restricted or blocked by China’s Great Firewall, given the difficulty of extraterritorial enforcement against non-PRC entities, which may not have operations or assets within the reach of China’s regulators.
