Monkey King on a motorbike: Beijing cracks down on deepfake AI remakes of classic dramas
The crackdown is Beijing’s latest effort to discipline the use of AI at a time when short video platforms are being flooded with AI-generated video
China’s state broadcasting authority has urged short video platforms – including ByteDance-owned Douyin, the domestic version of TikTok, and Kuaishou Technology – to clean up any “peculiar adaptations” of classic films or television dramas generated using deep fake artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
In a notice issued on the weekend, the National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA) said that some AI videos adapted from ancient works, such as showing the Monkey King – a literary and religious figure from 16th-Century novel Journey to the West – riding a motorcycle, have “gone against the original spirit of the classics and allegedly infringed their rights”.
Monkey King, also known as Wukong, is the main character in the popular video game Black Myth: Wukong. The story of Wukong accompanying a Tang dynasty monk on a journey to obtain Buddhist sutras has been adapted into many film and TV productions.
In another example of the AI-generated content, the monk Tang is shown kissing a woman, an act which goes against Buddhist disciplines.
The NRTA asked video platforms to identify and remove such clips, and report the progress of the work, by Tuesday. It also demanded that platforms “strictly comply with the requirements to review generative AI content” and “clearly mark [content] if it’s GenAI”.
