Chinese AI regulation is increasingly focused on using the technology for censorship and surveillance, analysts warned.
A recent Communist Party Politburo meeting focusing on “the governance of the Internet ecosystem” was striking for authorities’ shifting stance on AI, the China-watcher Bill Bishop noted, “moving beyond viewing it merely as a frontier industry to be regulated and instead positioning it as a functional instrument of social control and state capacity.” A separate report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, meanwhile, argued that Beijing was using AI to censor sensitive photos, enable mass surveillance, and drive public-sentiment analysis among minority populations. “AI lets the CCP monitor more people, more closely, with less effort,” one of the report’s authors told The Washington Post.