Officials call for legal 'red lines' to guide AI growth at Wuzhen summit

Senior Chinese officials on cyberspace and law called for the setting of precise legal "red lines and high lines", along with ethical guidelines and technical standards, to ensure artificial intelligence develops in a safe, reliable and controllable manner.

They made the remarks at a subforum on law-based cyberspace governance during the World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, on Sunday.

Vice-Minister of Justice Li Mingzheng described AI as "a strategic technology driving a new round of scientific and industrial transformation" that brings both opportunities and risks.

"AI technology cannot deviate from the direction of human civilizational progress," Li said, adding that development and security must advance in a coordinated way.

"While promoting continuous innovation and breakthroughs, we must proactively guard against and address potential risks, ensuring AI develops in a safe, reliable and controllable manner," he said.

He added that China will "grasp the trends and patterns of AI development, precisely set legal red lines and high lines, and give full play to the safeguarding role of the rule of law".

AI governance, Li noted, is a complex systems project that requires the participation of government, industry, academia, research institutions and the public.

Yang Jianwen, deputy director of the Cyberspace Administration of China, said AI is profoundly reshaping production and daily life, driving revolutionary advances in productivity and deep structural change.

At the same time, he cautioned that new technical risks such as data security gaps, algorithmic bias and deepfakes have emerged, extending into social, ethical and legal challenges.

To mitigate these challenges, Yang called for the continuous improvement of legal and policy framework for AI; the refinement of ethical guidelines for research, development and application; and accelerating the formulation of technical standards in key fields.

He also urged stronger enforcement against illegal or abusive uses of AI, improving law enforcement measures suited to AI's development and governance, fully leveraging industry self-discipline, and building a multi-stakeholder, collaborative governance system.

The official said China will continue to promote an ecosystem that encourages innovation and effectively manages risk so that AI can better serve economic development, social governance and people's well-being.

At the forum, Zhu Yapin, chief prosecutor of the People's Procuratorate of Beijing Municipality, outlined categories of AI-related offenses that local prosecutors in the capital are mainly focusing on.

According to Zhu, these include illegally deleting AI training data and stealing data from AI companies' cloud servers. He also cited Beijing's first criminal case involving copyright infringement through an AI generative model.

"We have handled more than 10,000 cases of online offenses, including telecom fraud, infringements of citizens' personal information, online violence and rumor mongering," Zhu said, adding that the efforts aim to help foster a "clean and orderly" cyberspace.