Chinese police have detained a ChatGPT user for allegedly creating a fake news story about a train crash using the AI-powered chatbot.
This is one of the first cases of enforcement under a new Chinese law that regulates AI-generated deepfakes, which are fabricated but realistic digital media.
Chinese Suspect Exploits ChatGPT
The offender, who has been identified as Hong, created a phony article about a collision that allegedly resulted in the deaths of nine construction workers in the province of Gansu using ChatGPT.
The fake story was then spread on social media by 21 accounts owned by a southern Chinese media company.
While ChatGPT is technically inaccessible in China due to internet censorship, determined individuals can use virtual private network (VPN) software to bypass these restrictions.
The recently enacted law in China prohibits the use of deep fakes that endanger national security, harm the nation’s image or public interest, and disrupt economic or social order, including the production, publication, or transmission of fake news.
Although ChatGPT, created by Microsoft-backed OpenAI, is blocked in China, users can nevertheless access it by using virtual private networks (VPN).
Since 2011, when authorities came under pressure to explain why state media had failed to provide timely updates on a bullet train collision in the city of Wenzhou that resulted in 40 deaths, railway crashes have been a contentious subject in China.
According to reports, the suspect, whose last name was Hong, was questioned on May 5 in Dongguan, a city in southern Guangdong province.
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China Makes First Arrest Under New Deep Fake Regulations
Authorities claimed the arrest was the first in Gansu since China’s Cyberspace Administration implemented new policies in January to curb down the use of deep fakes.
According to state broadcaster CGTN, this is the first arrest in the nation of a person charged with using ChatGPT to create and disseminate false information.
Deep fake, often referred to as deep synthesis, is a term for artificial intelligence-produced text and images that are incredibly lifelike.
The severely regulated internet in China is now barred from users creating deep bogus information on subjects already covered by existing laws.
It also describes how to remove content that is deemed harmful or untrue.
The arrest also occurred in the midst of a 100-day campaign that the Ministry of Public Security’s internet division initiated in March to combat the spread of online misinformation.
Since the beginning of the year, Chinese internet goliaths like Baidu and Alibaba have launched their own iterations of the ChatGPT service in an effort to overtake OpenAI.
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