Ningbo Court Concludes a Case Involving the Use of AI to Produce Obscene Materials for Profit

The Yuyao City People’s Court in Ningbo, Zhejiang, recently concluded a case involving the use of generative artificial intelligence to produce obscene materials for profit. The six defendants were sentenced to prison terms ranging from three years and one month to three years and ten months. Reports say the main offender, Zheng, had previously worked as an AI programmer at a major domestic game company. In July 2024, after he came into contact with an overseas AI sexchat bot, he began planning to develop similar software and formed a team with colleagues, online acquaintances, and others. In January 2025, the AI model involved in the case went online on an overseas platform and charged users through multiple payment channels. The court found that the relevant personnel bypassed the model’s builtin pornography safety restrictions by modifying system prompts and setting role cards, among other methods. After paying, users could generate pornographic text and then further generate obscene images of varying explicitness. The case shows that the model generated more than 370,000 static images and more than 6,000 animated images, with cumulative recharge payments totaling the equivalent of over 170,000 yuan. The court stated that although the defendants argued the content was triggered by user input, they had in fact exercised substantive control over the output through a preset technical framework, and therefore it should be recognized as “producing obscene materials” in the sense of criminal law. The relevant opinion issued by the Supreme People’s Court on September 7 also makes clear that using artificial intelligence to produce, sell, or disseminate obscene materials constitutes a crime and criminal liability shall be pursued in accordance with the law.