Artificial intelligence related judicial judgments, new regulations, rule of law protection, industrial innovation and goodness
Source: Legal Daily
Author: Zhao Jingwu (Associate Professor at the School of Law, Beihang University)
On September 7, 2026, the Supreme People's Court issued the "Opinions on the Trial of Disputes Involving Artificial Intelligence in accordance with the Law" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions"). The issuance of the "Opinions" marks a new stage in China's artificial intelligence judicial governance, providing rules and guidance for people's courts at all levels to handle disputes related to artificial intelligence in accordance with the law, and contributing Chinese judicial wisdom to the global development of artificial intelligence.
The Judgment Logic of Disputes Involving Artificial Intelligence
At the trial level of disputes involving artificial intelligence, the Opinion not only focuses on judicial judgment to resolve disputes and the safe application of artificial intelligence technology, but also emphasizes the protection of innovation and equal protection.
Supporting innovative development is to use judicial judgments that comply with the spirit of laws and policies and the laws of technological development to support scientific and technological innovation and industrial innovation. The Opinion proposes to balance the protection of rights and interests with the development of the technology industry with a tolerant and cautious attitude, and create a good environment that encourages exploration and tolerates failure. Regulate monopolies or unfair competition implemented through the use of artificial intelligence technology in accordance with the law. From the perspective of constructing a benign industrial ecosystem, it is emphasized that equal protection of the rights and interests of small and medium-sized enterprises and other business entities should be strengthened in the judicial process. Both technology giants and various small and medium-sized enterprises are important players in the artificial intelligence innovation market. Ensuring equal rights, opportunities, and rules for all entities in the development and utilization of artificial intelligence technology is conducive to creating a favorable environment for technological innovation.
The Opinion emphasizes the establishment of a solid safety bottom line. Accurately determine legal liability in accordance with the nature and magnitude of the specific damages and risks that artificial intelligence may cause to the legitimate rights and interests of civil subjects in different application scenarios. Distinguish the differences in technical principles, risk spillover, and control capabilities between different types of large models such as general and specialized, open source and closed source, and make reasonable divisions of legal responsibilities for developers, providers, users, and other entities, and comprehensively and accurately implement the criminal policy of balancing leniency and severity. The Opinion clarifies the specific coordination methods between development and security, innovation and governance, rights protection and industry promotion through more specific judicial judgment rules, and provides measures to resolve conflicts of interests among different subjects.
Innovations in the Judgment Rules for Disputes Involving Artificial Intelligence
From the specific content, the "Opinions" comprehensively sort out and summarize the judgment rules of artificial intelligence dispute cases from the aspects of infringement disputes, intellectual property disputes, trial procedure rules, and case handling mechanisms. In terms of the principle of attribution, as artificial intelligence technology is still in the stage of technological innovation and development, applying the principle of no fault liability indiscriminately to cases involving artificial intelligence infringement may increase the innovation cost and compliance burden of technology developers and providers, suppress their innovation enthusiasm, and artificially limit the possible technological innovation directions of artificial intelligence. Therefore, the Opinion points out that if the law does not explicitly stipulate the application of no fault liability or presumed fault liability, the principle of fault liability stipulated in Article 1165 (1) of the Civil Code should be used to determine whether the actor bears tort liability. When determining whether the perpetrator is at fault and the degree of fault, factors such as the specific scenario of artificial intelligence application, degree of autonomy, technology and information transparency, potential risks and impact scope, the ability of relevant parties to prevent and control damage, and the measures actually taken should be comprehensively considered.
One of the innovative points of the Opinion is the establishment of comprehensive rules for protecting the rights and interests of civil subjects. Taking the protection of personality rights as an example, once technologies such as "AI face swapping and voice acting" and "AI resurrection of the deceased" are abused, they will cause damage to the portrait rights, voice rights, and even other personality rights of civil subjects. Therefore, the Opinion proposes that the use of generative artificial intelligence to process the names, portraits, etc. of specific natural persons or deceased persons shall not violate laws and regulations, nor shall it violate public order and good customs. Legal responsibility cannot be avoided by reasons such as technological innovation and technological neutrality. Unless otherwise provided by law, without the consent of a natural person, the use of artificial intelligence to process the name, portrait, etc. of a natural person, generate a virtual digital image that can recognize the natural person and use it publicly, or use the voice of a natural person as training corpus to generate a synthesized human voice that can recognize the natural person. If the rights holder claims that the actor has infringed on the rights of name, portrait, and voice, the Opinion clarifies that the people's court should support reasonable claims and avoid natural persons as civil legal subjects from becoming objects in the process of technological governance.
In addition, in response to the current use of artificial intelligence to implement behaviors such as "network unboxing" and "human flesh search" that infringe on the privacy and reputation rights of natural persons, the "Opinions" clarify the duty of artificial intelligence service providers to pay attention to the content generated by artificial intelligence, and require providers to take necessary measures such as stopping the generation of infringing content and blocking relevant generation instructions in a timely manner after being notified by the rights holder.
Regarding the use of artificial intelligence to manipulate virtual digital images and voices, engage in inappropriate behavior or make false statements, and reduce the social evaluation of relevant parties, the Opinion recognizes it as an infringement of reputation rights, which is interconnected with the governance ideas on online violence in the Anti Cyberbullying Law (draft for comments), and helps to shape a comprehensive framework for the governance of online information content. This "notification" rule is designed to better assess whether service providers have established a sustained and effective mechanism for protecting and disposing of rights, in order to address the potential new infringement risks that may arise from artificial intelligence innovation. And the corresponding determination of infringement liability does not stop at whether to establish corresponding disposal mechanisms, but also involves reviewing the measures and effects actually taken by the service provider. If the service provider knows or should know that the user has infringed but has not taken necessary measures, the corresponding liability rules should still apply, and it is not necessary to receive notification before being held responsible.
The Opinion also stipulates the prohibition system for personality rights infringement, mainly aimed at the frequent occurrence of personality rights infringement on current online platforms. If only held accountable after the fact, post remedy is often difficult to fully compensate for the damage already caused. Therefore, if the right holder has evidence to prove that an illegal act that infringes on their personality rights is happening or about to happen, and if it is not stopped in a timely manner, it will cause irreparable damage, they can apply for a personality rights infringement injunction in accordance with the law, and the injunction measures shall not exceed the necessary limits.
In the field of consumer protection and automatic driving, the Opinions also clearly stipulates the behaviors that infringe upon the legitimate rights and interests of consumers, such as "big data killing", "counterfeiting celebrities carrying goods", and the compensation liability for traffic accidents involving autonomous vehicle and vehicles with auxiliary driving functions, reflecting the scenario based and type based judgment ideas.
The use boundary and evidence review of artificial intelligence assisted litigation
When using artificial intelligence to assist litigation, the Opinion clarifies the standards for reviewing evidence related to artificial intelligence and prohibits improper evidence collection behavior. It requires litigation participants to ensure that the relevant content is true and accurate when submitting litigation materials. Especially when using artificial intelligence technology to assist in the collection and aggregation of litigation materials, attention should be paid to the negative impact of technological limitations such as "AI illusions" on litigation materials. Of course, the obligation of verifying materials for litigation participants cannot replace the responsibility of the people's court to review evidence and determine facts in accordance with the law. Because, guided by the principle of good faith in litigation, judges and litigation participants both bear varying degrees of evidence verification obligations, with the core purpose of ensuring that the entire litigation process involves multi-faceted verification of litigation materials and minimizing the misleading effect of false litigation materials on the judgment results.
Due to the accelerated innovation and iteration of artificial intelligence technology, the verification of litigation materials by people's courts has significantly increased in recent years. Regarding the submission of litigation documents, case search reports, and other materials by litigation participants that are generated using artificial intelligence, the Opinion requires an explanation of the use of artificial intelligence assistance when submitting them to the court, and assumes legal responsibility for the authenticity and accuracy of the relevant content. The reason for making such a request is that the use of artificial intelligence to forge evidence and obstruct the trial of cases by the people's court may constitute the situations listed in Article 114 of the Civil Procedure Law where legal responsibility should be pursued, rather than the new obligation norms added to the Opinion. If there is evidence to prove that the litigation materials submitted by the litigation participants are artificially generated and fabricated by artificial intelligence, and constitute acts that obstruct civil litigation such as "forging important evidence", the people's court shall determine the legal liability based on the circumstances.
In summary, the "Opinions" fully respond to the practical legal needs in the trial of artificial intelligence dispute cases and corporate compliance operations, and further refine the judgment logic and trial rules of artificial intelligence dispute cases in the judicial process on the basis of not violating existing laws and regulations. It comprehensively responds to the concerns of artificial intelligence enterprises in compliance operations, provides clear behavioral norms and guidance, and also provides a comprehensive judicial guarantee system for the innovative development of the artificial intelligence industry.
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