Top court sets rules to protect rights from AI misuse

The Supreme People's Court, China's top court, released a guideline on Monday to address the legal challenges posed by artificial intelligence when it infringes on individuals' legitimate rights and interests.

The guideline, comprising 24 articles, addresses pressing public concerns such as AI face-swapping, AI hallucinations, AI voice cloning and "box-opening", with the aim of strengthening judicial protection of civil rights in the digital age and ensuring the healthy and orderly development of AI technology.

It is the first judicial document on AI-related adjudication rules issued by China's top court.

"The guideline is intended to help tackle cases in which AI is misused or abused to infringe upon individuals' image, reputation and voice rights, which are among the most common issues related to deepfakes," Si Yanli, deputy head of the Supreme People's Court's Research Office, said at a news conference.

"AI face-swapping can exploit anyone's likeness indiscriminately, making ordinary people potential targets of deepfakes. AI voice cloning can 'steal' someone's voice for just a few yuan, creating synthetic results that sound convincingly real," she said.

To address these challenges, the guideline stipulates that creating, using or distributing identifiable virtual digital images based on an individual's name or likeness without permission constitutes an infringement of personality rights. Similarly, using someone's voice without consent to create imitations of their speech patterns constitutes a violation of voice rights.

The guideline also clarifies that manipulating virtual personas or synthetic voices to spread misinformation or damage an individual's reputation will result in legal consequences for those responsible.

Furthermore, the guideline addresses "box-opening", or doxing, a severe form of cyberbullying that can disrupt online order. It stipulates that using AI to track and analyze publicly available personal data, such as phone numbers, online accounts and social media profiles, with the intent to obtain, leak or disclose private information, or to disturb an individual's peace, constitutes an infringement of privacy rights.