Taipei, Taiwan – After playing catchup to ChatGPT, China is racing to regulate the rapidly-advancing field of artificial intelligence (AI).

Under draft regulations released this week, Chinese tech companies will need to register generative AI products with China’s cyberspace agency and submit them to a security assessment before they can be released to the public.

The regulations cover practically all aspects of generative AI, from how it is trained to how users interact with it, in an apparent bid by Beijing to control the at times unwieldy technology, the break-neck development of which has prompted warnings from tech leaders including Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

Under the rules unveiled by the Cyberspace Administration of China on Tuesday, tech companies will be responsible for the “legitimacy of the source of pre-training data” to ensure content reflects the “core value of socialism”.

Companies must ensure AI does not call for the “subversion of state power” or the overthrow of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), incite moves to “split the country” or “undermine national unity”, produce content that is pornographic, or encourage violence, extremism, terrorism or discrimination.

They are also restricted from using personal data as part of their generative AI training material and must require users to verify their real identity before using their products.

Those who violate the rules will face fines of between 10,000 yuan ($1,454) and 100,000 yuan ($14,545) as well as a possible criminal investigation.

While China has yet to match the success of California-based Open AI’s groundbreaking ChatGPT, its push to regulate the nascent field has moved faster than elsewhere.

AI in the United States is still largely unregulated outside of the recruiting industry. AI regulation has yet to receive much traction in US Congress, although privacy-related regulations around AI are expected to start rolling out at the state level this year.

The European Union has proposed sweeping legislation known as the AI Act that would classify which kinds of AI are “unacceptable” and banned, “high risk” and regulated, and unregulated.

The law would follow up on the EU’s 2018 General Data Protection Regulation, passed in 2018, which is considered one of the toughest data privacy-protection laws in the world. (Al Jazeera)

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