5 months after ChatGPT set off an investment frenzy over artificial intelligence, Beijing is moving to rein in China’s chatbots, a show of the government’s resolve to keep tight regulatory control over technology that could define an era.

The Cyberspace Administration of China unveiled draft rules this month for so-called generative artificial intelligence—the software systems, like the one behind ChatGPT, that can formulate text and pictures in response to a user’s questions and prompts. According to the regulations, companies must heed the Chinese Communist Party’s strict censorship rules, just as websites and apps have to avoid publishing material that besmirches China’s leaders or rehashes forbidden history. The content of AI systems will need to reflect “socialist core values” and avoid information that undermines “state power” or national unity. Companies will also have to make sure their chatbots create words and pictures that are truthful and respect intellectual property, and will be required to register their algorithms, the software brains behind chatbots, with regulators.

…The rules showcase China’s “move fast and break things” approach to regulation, said Kendra Schaefer, head of tech policy at Trivium China, a Beijing-based consulting firm.

…Experts are divided on how difficult it will be to train AI systems to be consistently factual. Some doubt that companies can account for the gamut of Chinese censorship rules, which are often sweeping, are ever-changing and even require censorship of specific words and dates like June 4, 1989, the day of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Others believe that over time, and with enough work, the machines can be aligned with truth and specific values systems, even political ones.

…Still, China’s new guardrails may be ill timed. The country is facing intensifying competition and sanctions on semiconductors that threaten to undermine its competitiveness in technology, including artificial intelligence.

Hopes for Chinese AI ran high in early February when Xu Liang, an AI engineer and entrepreneur, released one of China’s earliest answers to ChatGPT as a mobile app. The app, ChatYuan, garnered over 10,000 downloads in the first hour, Mr. Xu said.

Media reports of marked differences between the party line and ChatYuan’s responses soon surfaced. Responses offered a bleak diagnosis of the Chinese economy and described the Russian war in Ukraine as a “war of aggression”, at odds with the party’s more pro-Russia stance. Days later, the authorities shut down the app.

Mr. Xu said he was adding measures to create a more “patriotic” bot. They include filtering out sensitive keywords and hiring more manual reviewers who can help him flag problematic answers. He is even training a separate model that can detect “incorrect viewpoints”, which he will filter.

Still, it is not clear when Mr. Xu’s bot will ever satisfy the authorities. The app was initially set to resume on Feb. 13, according to screenshots, but as of Friday it was still down. “Service will resume after troubleshooting is complete”, it read.

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