"Russian Invasion War", "Xi Jinping's Lifetime Rule"
Chinese Communist Party Concerned About Spread of Critical Information
High Risk of Failure in China's Artificial Intelligence Development
[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Ji-eun] On the 23rd, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported that Chinese authorities have instructed major IT companies such as Tencent not to provide the AI chatbot service ChatGPT. The authorities appear to have taken this measure out of concern that ChatGPT might deliver information critical of the Communist Party.
The Nihon Keizai cited anonymous sources related to the Chinese IT industry, stating, "Chinese authorities have instructed Tencent and Ant Group, an affiliate of the e-commerce company Alibaba, to prevent the use of ChatGPT services on their platforms."
The source also said that Tencent, a major Chinese tech company, blocked access to ChatGPT on its social media service WeChat last December 12 following the authorities' directive. Currently, to use ChatGPT in China, one must bypass the government's censorship system, the "Great Firewall," using a virtual private network (VPN).
In addition, Chinese authorities reportedly require prior reporting to regulatory bodies when providing services similar to ChatGPT.
The Chinese government's strong caution toward ChatGPT stems from concerns about the spread of information critical of the Communist Party leadership. Earlier, on the 3rd, China's AI chatbot "ChatYuan" was suspended just three days after its launch due to violations of laws and policies.
According to Taiwan News, when asked about the Russia-Ukraine war, ChatYuan described it as "Russia's aggressive war," which contradicts the Chinese government's stance of not defining the Russia-Ukraine war as an invasion by Russia. When asked about President Xi Jinping's lifetime rule, it responded, "An important system of the Chinese Communist Party." Lifetime rule is a taboo topic within China.
The Nihon Keizai explained, "ChatGPT primarily analyzes Western data to provide answers, and this data contains many critical views of China. Conversational AI could produce responses critical of the leadership, which likely prompted the authorities to take action."
With the authorities imposing strict restrictions on AI chatbots, there are concerns that related service development by Chinese IT companies may be stalled. China's largest search engine Baidu is developing an AI-based chatbot similar to ChatGPT called "Ernie Bot." Game company NetEase (Wang Yi) and Alibaba are also reportedly researching similar technologies and conducting internal tests.
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