The Chinese Government has become the first in the world to ban the creation and use of AI ‘deepfakes’ to spread harmful news or to impersonate people without consent.

The new policies, enforced by the Cyberspace Administration of China, and in effect from today, will require all “deep synthesis service providers” to ensure their AI algorithms are not being used to “produce, copy, publish, and disseminate illegal and harmful information” or to illegally impersonate someone.

They must also be clearly labelled with a watermark.

The CAC says the technology represents a threat to China’s social stability and national security.

The policy, titled Regulations on the Administration of Deep Synthesis of Internet Information Services, explains:

“Services that provide functions such as intelligent dialogue, synthesised human voice, human face generation, and immersive realistic scenes that generate or significantly change information content, shall be marked prominently to avoid public confusion or misidentification.

“It is required that no organisation or individual shall use technical means to delete, tamper with, or conceal relevant marks.”