China's Supreme Court issues opinions on trials involving artificial intelligence

On September 7, the Supreme People's Court of China released opinions on the trial of AIrelated dispute cases, clarifying the basic principles and rules for handling judicial judgments, and emphasizing the need to uphold the legal bottom line while supporting technological innovation. This 24point document is based on existing laws such as the Civil Code, the Cybersecurity Law, the Copyright Law, and the Personal Information Protection Law, and focuses on responding to new disputes brought about by AI applications, including "AI face swapping," "AI voice imitation," bigdata price discrimination against loyal customers, impersonating celebrities to promote products, fraudulent litigation, and forged evidence. The opinions make clear that generating and publicly displaying identifiable images or synthetic voices using another person's name, likeness, or voice without consent may infringe the corresponding personality rights. Courts will handle, in accordance with the law, cases involving unreasonable differential treatment through algorithms, consumer fraud, or the fabrication of materials with the help of AI. The Supreme People's Court also stated that, for issues still subject to disagreement—such as whether AIgenerated content is copyrightable and whether using others' works without permission to train large models—it will not make any provision for the time being.