China suspends 98,000 social media accounts for unlabeled AI-generated content
China's Cyberspace Administration suspended approximately 98,000 social media accounts across multiple platforms for failing to properly label AI-generated content and information sources. The unlabeled synthetic videos and posts reportedly misled the public about policy and current events.
What happened
Social media accounts on Douyin, Kuaishou, Bilibili, Weibo, and WeChat video accounts published AI-generated videos without adding AI generation labels. The videos included depictions of animals engaging in human-like activities, such as golden retrievers holding infants, orangutans protecting offspring against crocodiles, tigers and orange cats driving home to visit family, cats playing games and wearing glasses, and shiba inus cooking meals.
The Cyberspace Administration of China reported that some social media accounts failed to properly label the source of information, including AI-generated content identifiers, when publishing information related to current events, public policy, and social events. Account owners also failed to label fictional dramatization content.
Reported impact
The unlabeled AI-generated content reportedly misled the public and made it difficult for viewers unfamiliar with AI to distinguish between virtual and real content.
Unlabeled source information on policy-related posts prevented the public from obtaining accurate and complete authoritative information, potentially leading to misunderstandings of government policy based on fragmented content.
Index analysis
The failure to label AI-generated content as synthetic allowed viewers to mistake fictional depictions for reality, according to the regulatory announcement.
Governance controls
The Cyberspace Administration of China directed website platforms to comprehensively standardize content labeling work on short videos, optimize labeling functions, and make labeling a required step in the short video publishing process.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.