China licenses generative services but not research

On 15 August 2023 the Interim Measures for the Management of Generative Artificial Intelligence Services took effect, promulgated on 10 July 2023 as Cyberspace Administration Order No. 15 with the agreement of six other agencies. Article 17 requires a provider of a generative service with public opinion properties to pass a security assessment and file its algorithm; article 2 puts everything not offered to the domestic public outside the measures.

The measures were adopted at the Cyberspace Administration's 12th office meeting on 23 May 2023 with the agreement of the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security and the National Radio and Television Administration, seven bodies counting the Administration itself. The third paragraph of article 2 states that industry organisations, enterprises, educational and research institutions, public cultural bodies and relevant professional institutions that develop or apply generative technology without offering a service to the domestic public do not come under the measures. Article 19 obliges a provider, at an inspector's request, to explain the source, scale and type of its training data, its labelling rules and the mechanism of its algorithm. What the record does not claim. The security assessment and algorithm filing under article 17 apply not to every public generative service but to those whose service has public opinion properties or social mobilisation capabilities; the report this candidate came from presented the duty as general. The record names no licence granted: the report's claim of eight first approvals in late August 2023 found no primary source here and does not enter. The State Administration for Market Regulation, which the report listed among the authors, is not among them.