On may 7th, police in Gansu province in the northwest of China, announced the first arrest of a person for a crime related to ChatGPT. The suspect, whose identity has not been disclosed, is accused of using AI to create fake news.

According to the police, the person who has been arrested spread the fake news that nine people had died in a train crash in the region and posted it on several profiles on the Baijiahao social network, with over 15 thousand views. He confessed to having resorted to ChatGPT to write the text using pieces of news that had gone viral before. The sentence can range from five to 10 years of detention.

Chinese Law

In January 2023, the Manufacturing, Information Technology, and Public Safety Ministries joined the Cyberspace Administration of China agency and created specific legislation for AI-related crimes. One of the rules is that any content created by AI should be “clearly labelled” as such when published online. This was the first arrest case under this law.

ChatGPT is currently not available in China, but users can access it using VPN technology, which circumvents the block. Any system of this type that wants to operate in China must go through the Chinese government’s security inspection.

Artificial Intelligence and crime prevention

In July 2022, researchers from the University of Chicago in the United States published a study on the use of AI to predict crime. Based on statistics and data analysis, it can warn where and when an offense is likely to take place. However, this kind of system makes mistakes. In November 2022, a man was arrested for stealing credit cards, having been accused by AI. He spent a week in jail before it was discovered that the facial recognition algorithm responsible for identifying him as the criminal was wrong.

Sources: Folha de S. Paulo newspaper, South China Morning Post, The New York Times, and Yahoo

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