Sunday 08/February/2026 – 07:35 PM
China has stepped up its regulatory measures on the artificial intelligence sector, after imposing fines on a number of companies on charges of impersonating well-known services such as GPT chat from OpenAI and the “DeepSeek” platform, as part of a campaign aimed at combating unfair competition and protecting users from fraud.
China imposes fines on several companies
According to what was published by The Sun website, the Chinese Market Regulatory Authority (SAMR) announced that it had fined the Shanghai company about 62.7 thousand yuan (equivalent to approximately 9 thousand dollars), after it operated a fake GPT chat service through the “WeChat” application affiliated with Tencent.
According to the authority, the company misled users that the service represented the official version of the “OpenAI” chatbot in China, and forced them to pay fees for artificial intelligence conversations, in clear violation of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law.
The authority said in its statement that the company was fully aware of the status and wide influence of the GBT chat bot, and deliberately created a misleading impression that it was providing an official service, with the aim of deceiving users and pushing them to purchase.
In another case, the authority imposed a fine of 30,000 yuan on Hangzhou Company, after it created an unlicensed website promoting the local publishing service of DeepSeek, using a design, fonts and icons that were almost identical to the original platform, which led to users being misled into paying for a fake service.
The authority noted that the beginning of 2025 witnessed a widespread spread of counterfeit services and websites bearing the name DeepSeek, including violations such as trademark confusion, copyright infringement, and misleading advertisements. It considered that these investigations constitute a deterrent to violators and contribute to directing the artificial intelligence market towards a more organized and disciplined path.
