Chinese Social Media Starts Labeling Content Made By AI To Comply With Laws

Illustration of WeChat (photo: Unsplash)

JAKARTA - China's main social media platform, including WeChat, Douyin, Weibo, has started labeling each AI-generated content post (Artificial Intelligence), which is shared online in the country.

This labeling was carried out in order to comply with laws that took effect on Monday, in which this law mandates the labeling of all AI-generated content online.

The law, published in March, requires explicit and implicit labels for AI-generated text, images, audio, videos, and virtual content.

This means that this explicit tagging is a sign that must be clearly visible to users, while implicit tagging such as digital watermarks must be embedded in content metadata.

Based on information from local media, the South China Morning Post, the law was drafted by China's Maya World Administration (CAC) together with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security, and the National Radio and Television Administration.

The new regulations reflect Beijing's increased scrutiny of AI, due to growing concerns over copyright misinformation, infringement, and online fraud.

Meanwhile, WeChat, known as Weixin in mainland China, stated that content creators should voluntarily report all AI-generated content after publication.

For unsigned content, WeChat states it will remind users to "use their own assessment" online.