What is it about?
In September 2026, China's Supreme People's Court issued new guidance telling judges how to decide cases involving artificial intelligence. It deals with questions such as who is responsible when AI causes harm, how personal information and personality rights are protected, how copyright applies to AI training data and open-source AI, and how courts should handle electronic evidence. This work turns that guidance into a single-page English map. It places translations of the provisions alongside 145 short explanatory points drawn from official commentary and the Court's press Q&A, and uses arrows to show how the issues connect. The map keeps the Court's guidance separate from the personal views of the commentary's authors, and it keeps the conditions, exceptions and open questions. Readers who do not read Chinese can see the whole picture at a glance.
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Why is it important?
This guidance is meant to steer courts across China in deciding AI disputes, so it affects AI developers, platforms, users and anyone whose data or creative work is involved. It was released only in September 2026, and most of the material explaining it is available only in Chinese and spread across separate sources. This map brings the provisions, the official commentary and the Court's press explanations together in one English document, so lawyers, companies, researchers and policymakers outside China can quickly see how the pieces fit. It also shows which statements come from the Court's guidance and which reflect commentators' personal views, and it keeps the exceptions and unresolved questions visible. This helps readers avoid overstating what Chinese law requires and gives a clear starting point for comparing China's approach with AI rules in other jurisdictions.
Perspectives
I made this map because, when a major Chinese judicial document comes out, readers outside China often see only headlines or partial translations. The Opinions are short, but understanding them properly means reading them alongside the official commentary and the Court's press explanations, which are published separately and only in Chinese. Working across Chinese and English legal materials, I wanted a single page that shows the whole structure at once. I was also careful to mark the difference between what the Court says and what individual commentators suggest, because that difference is easy to lose in translation. I hope the map is useful to colleagues in AI governance, privacy and intellectual property, and that it encourages closer, better-grounded comparison of how different legal systems handle AI disputes. I welcome corrections and suggestions on the translations.
Chanhou Lou
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Artificial intelligence liability and evidence in China: English knowledge graph of the Opinions of the Supreme People's Court on the Lawful Adjudication of Disputes Involving Artificial Intelligence (2026), January 2026, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.7444185.
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