A suspect recognized solely as “Hong” was detained by native authorities and arrested within the Gansu district of China after allegedly utilizing ChatGPT to generate pretend information tales. 

In accordance with a report from the South China Morning Publish, Hong was detained after an investigation into an unsubstantiated article referring to a practice crash was found on April 18 by legislation enforcement brokers.

Hong’s arrest for “utilizing synthetic intelligence expertise to concoct false and unfaithful data” got here after cybersecurity specialists found no less than 20 accounts had concurrently posted the pretend information article to a preferred running a blog website hosted by Chinese language tech conglomerate Baidu.

China’s legal guidelines concerning the usage of social media are thought-about among the many strictest on the planet. Police stated Hong was arrested for working afoul of an ordinance in opposition to “choosing quarrels and scary hassle,” a catch-all legislation that particularly covers spreading pretend information and rumors on the web.

If charged, Hong faces as much as 5 years in jail beneath the traditional statute. Nonetheless, if courts view the offense as egregious, they may very well be sentenced to as many as 10 years beneath the legislation’s prolonged provisions protecting crimes thought-about particularly extreme.

Whereas the ChatGPT service is at the moment banned in China, its use will be obfuscated by digital non-public networks (VPNs).

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Related homegrown synthetic intelligence (AI) companies, akin to Alibaba’s “Tongyi Qianwen,” a not too long ago introduced generative AI mannequin educated to reply questions in each English and Mandarin, have obtained the Chinese language authorities’s blessing. Nonetheless, as Cointelegraph reported in mid-April, it remains unclear whether or not Tongyi Qianwen can have the identical artistic talents as ChatGPT.

The dearth of sturdy generative AI fashions in China may probably have a chilling impact on the nation’s tech scene, particularly in sectors akin to fintech and cryptocurrency buying and selling, the place the usage of ChatGPT and merchandise constructed on OpenAI’s GPT API have exploded into popularity.