Provisions on the Administration of Deep Synthesis of Internet Information Services

Summary

China's Deep Synthesis Provisions are an administrative regulation jointly issued by the CAC, MIIT, and MPS (CAC Order No. 12), promulgated 25 November 2022 and effective 10 January 2023. They govern the use of "deep synthesis" technology — defined in Art. 23 (附则) as the use of deep-learning, virtual-reality, and other generative/synthetic algorithms to produce text, images, audio, video, virtual scenes, or other network information — in internet information services within mainland China (territorial scope set by Art. 2). Core obligations: a baseline requirement that providers add technical identifiers (implicit/embedded markers, i.e. watermark-type tagging) to all generated/edited content and retain logs (Art. 16); a conspicuous/explicit labelling requirement for synthesis services that could confuse or mislead the public, enumerating intelligent dialogue/writing, synthetic/imitation voice, face generation/swap/manipulation/pose control, and immersive simulated scenes (Art. 17); a prohibition on deleting, altering, or concealing those identifiers (Art. 18); real-identity verification of service users (Art. 9); strengthened training-data management plus a requirement to obtain the separate consent of an individual whose biometric (face/voice) information is edited (Art. 14); a rumor-refuting mechanism (Art. 11) and a user-appeal/public-complaint-and-report portal (Art. 12); algorithm-style filing/registration for services with public-opinion or social-mobilization attributes (Art. 19); and a security assessment for products/functions with such attributes (Art. 20). The Provisions are the principal cross-referenced predecessor to the 2023 Interim Measures for Generative AI Services (Art. 12 of the GenAI Measures defers labelling to these Provisions) and to the 2025 Measures/standard on labelling of AI-generated synthetic content. Article numbers cited reflect the FINAL effective text as published on cac.gov.cn (numbering differs from the January 2022 draft for comment). Classifications grounded only in the verified primary source; confidence is capped at medium per §7.11 reduced-confidence rule. AUDIT NOTE: foundation_models, biometric_id, and development_rights_framing citations corrected against the official text (definition is Art. 23 not Art. 2; the encourage-self-discipline language is Art. 5 not Art. 1/4); biometric_id excerpt restored to verbatim.

At a glance

Adopted

2022-11-25

Effective

2023-01-10

Status

in force

Primary source

互联网信息服务深度合成管理规定 (Provisions on the Administration of Deep Synthesis of Internet Information Services), jointly issued by the Cyberspace Administration of China (国家互联网信息办公室), the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (工业和信息化部), and the Ministry of Public Security (公安部), CAC Order No. 12, promulgated 25 Nov 2022, effective 10 Jan 2023 (25 articles, 5 chapters).

Source URL

https://www.cac.gov.cn/2022-12/11/c_1672221949354811.htm