China cracks down on AI ‘slop’, clearing out clutter from WeChat, RedNote, Douyin

China is taking action against the proliferation of low-quality artificial intelligence-generated content on social media platforms, as part of a broader campaign to curb the misuse of generative technology, the country’s top internet regulator announced on Wednesday. The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) disclosed that it had eliminated over 5.61 million instances of harmful or unlawful content and disabled approximately 49,000 accounts during its most recent enforcement operation.

The crackdown targeted 2,400 websites and applications, including prominent digital spaces like Douyin, Kuaishou, RedNote, and Tencent’s WeChat. Authorities concentrated on combating AI-generated fake news, explicit and violent content, impersonation, and safety violations involving minors. The move highlights Beijing’s mounting apprehensions regarding the ease of access to generative AI tools, which can rapidly produce convincing deepfakes and deceptive content.

The CAC noted that creators on Douyin, Kuaishou, and WeChat leveraged AI to transform classical Chinese works like the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Journey to the West into sensationalized, low-grade "digital swill" to draw in viewers. Other accounts utilized AI-generated "digital humans" and fabricated news articles to orchestrate deceptive marketing schemes aimed at elderly users, according to the regulator.

Chinese internet platform operators are beefing up their internal safeguards, with CAC reporting that developers of leading chatbots, such as ByteDance’s Doubao and Alibaba Group Holding’s Qwen, have bolstered training data reviews, enforced stricter output prohibitions, and introduced clearer labeling for synthetic content. Alibaba, the parent company of the South China Morning Post, is among the entities implementing these enhancements.

The CAC committed to persistently monitoring the risks associated with AI-generated and synthetic content and to implement measures aimed at preventing the "abuse and malicious use" of AI technology, all while aiming to foster the advancement of artificial intelligence.