China: the Supreme People’s Court Opinions on adjudicating AI disputes, 7 September 2026

Status

• 7 Sep 2026Released by the Supreme People’s Court at a press conference the same day, announced by Vice President Tao Kaiyuan. Page timestamp on the Court’s site 2026-09-07 19:22.
• StandingAn Opinions document (意见) issued under document number Fa Fa [2026] No. 10. The Court’s own release calls it the first judicial adjudication rules document on AI issued by the country’s highest adjudicative body. National judicial guidance to the courts, not a statute and not a judicial interpretation.
• BasisThe Civil Code, Cybersecurity Law, Copyright Law, Personal Information Protection Law and Civil Procedure Law, among others. The release states that China has not yet enacted a dedicated AI law, which is why the document works from existing statutes.
• StructureFive parts, twenty-four articles. The provisions are numbered (一) to (二十四) in the text; the Court’s own summary refers to them as Articles 1 to 24, and this page follows that.
• ReachGuidance to all people’s courts. Part Four (Articles 17 to 20) covers procedure, fact-finding, evidence review, obstruction of judicial order and criminal conduct.

Article 19: verify before filing, explain on filing

The last sentence of Article 19, in the original:

诉讼参与人提交诉讼文书、案例检索报告等材料如系使用人工智能生成，在提交法庭前应当认真核实相关法律、司法解释、案例等内容的真实性、准确性，在提交法庭时对使用人工智能辅助情况作出说明，并对有关内容的真实性、准确性依法承担责任。

Working translation: where litigation participants submit litigation documents, case search reports and similar materials that were generated using artificial intelligence, they shall, before submitting them to the court, carefully verify the truthfulness and accuracy of the relevant laws, judicial interpretations, cases and other content; shall, when submitting them to the court, give an explanation of the circumstances of the AI assistance used; and shall bear legal responsibility according to law for the truthfulness and accuracy of the content.

• WhoLitigation participants (诉讼参与人): parties, their representatives and others taking part in proceedings.
• WhatLitigation documents, case search reports and similar materials generated using AI.
• Before filingVerify the truthfulness and accuracy of the laws, judicial interpretations and cases cited.
• On filingExplain the AI assistance used.
• AfterBear legal responsibility for the content’s truthfulness and accuracy.

The same article deals with evidence obtained through AI manipulation. It names the methods: deleting or altering the generated-synthetic-content identifier (删除或者篡改生成合成内容标识), specific instruction inputs, selective presentation of results, and adversarial interference. Where a party obtains false evidence by those means, fabricates the basic facts of a civil case and brings false litigation, the court shall reject the claim and impose fines or detention according to the seriousness, with criminal liability where a crime is constituted. Using AI to forge evidence and obstruct the court is handled under Article 114 of the Civil Procedure Law. Removing the provenance label from AI-generated content is, in other words, named by the Court as a route to sanction, and it sits beside China’s labelling measures, which put that label there.

At the press conference the Court’s officials said that AI is only an auxiliary tool and that litigation participants may not rely on “AI hallucination” or the neutrality of the technology to escape their own legal responsibility, and that the courts had already found multiple instances of AI-generated false cases submitted without full verification, reported in the press in January 2026 and recorded in the People’s Court Case Database. They noted that other countries had issued guides placing responsibility for accuracy on the representative who files. Working translation of the Court’s published Q&A.

Articles 17 and 18: the evidence must show its own history

• Art. 18对电子数据生成、收集、存储、传输过程的真实性、完整性进行重点审查。 Working translation: focus review on the truthfulness and integrity of the process by which electronic data was generated, collected, stored and transmitted. The article then differentiates by technology: for big-data analysis reports, review the origin of the raw data, the cleaning rules and the soundness of the analysis method; for blockchain-stored evidence, review the truthfulness of the data before it went on chain and the reliability of the technical platform.
• Art. 18Where a party puts AI-generated content forward as evidence of infringement, the court weighs the design of the prompts and their effect on the output, the similarity to the work claimed, the consistency of repeated testing, and the model training, algorithm design and output filtering mechanisms.
• Art. 17控制书证、电子数据等证据的当事人无正当理由拒不提交，对方当事人主张该证据的内容不利于控制人的，人民法院可以认定该主张成立。 Working translation: where a party controlling documentary evidence, electronic data or similar evidence refuses without proper reason to produce it, and the opposing party asserts that its content is unfavourable to the holder, the court may find that assertion established. An adverse inference for a missing record.
• Art. 17Courts may investigate and collect evidence a party cannot obtain, must promptly review applications to preserve key technical evidence, and may use assessors, appraisers, expert assistants and technical investigation officers on questions of AI principles and operation.

Articles 11 and 12: records the operator and the developer must produce

• Art. 12人工智能开发者提出不侵权抗辩的，应当责令其提供训练数据来源、训练过程记录、模型运行模式以及科学理论依据等予以佐证。 Working translation: where an AI developer raises a non-infringement defence in a copyright dispute, the court shall order it to provide the sources of the training data, records of the training process, the mode of model operation and the scientific theoretical basis in support. The Opinions order the production of the records; they do not state what follows if the records cannot be produced.
• Art. 11To establish the cause of a road traffic accident involving an autonomous or assisted-driving vehicle, the court may require the vehicle producer, seller or operator, as data controller, to provide within the necessary scope true and complete autonomous-driving and assisted-driving event records and other data needed to find the facts.

Why it is on this list

Four separate articles of a national supreme court’s guidance turn on whether a record exists and can be handed over: the training process records of Article 12, the generation-collection-storage-transmission chain of Article 18, the event records held by the operator in Article 11, and the adverse inference of Article 17 when the holder will not produce. Article 19 adds the filer’s own duty: verify before filing, explain on filing, answer for the content afterwards.

The shape of that duty is the one Ireland wrote into Practice Direction HC 142 and the Caribbean Court of Justice wrote into Practice Direction No. 1 of 2025, reached independently by a court system of a different tradition. What none of the three says is how anyone would know, on the day it matters, whether the verification took place. That gap is the subject of its own page.

Sources

• 最高法发布《关于依法审理涉人工智能纠纷案件的意见》, the Supreme People’s Court’s release of 7 September 2026, carrying the full text of the twenty-four articles
• The Court’s published press conference questions and answers on the Opinions, 7 September 2026
• China Law Translate, which carries the Chinese source text dated 8 September 2026; no English translation was published there when this page was verified
• Working translation. The English on this page is Regulayer’s rendering of the Chinese text read at the Court’s own site. Where the two differ, the Chinese governs.

Related

• The law library · AI rules by country · China
• China · AI content labelling measures, the identifier Article 19 names
• China · Generative AI Interim Measures
• Ireland, Practice Direction HC 142, the same duty in a common-law court
• Verification is becoming a duty. Evidence of verification is the missing layer.

Checked against the source 9 September 2026: the Supreme People’s Court’s own release page, full Chinese text read. Working translation, not an official one. Information, not legal advice, and not advice on the law of the People’s Republic of China.

Common questions

Is the Supreme People's Court document a law?

No. It is an Opinions document (意见), national judicial guidance issued by the Supreme People's Court to the courts on how to adjudicate AI disputes under existing law. China has no dedicated AI statute. The Opinions rest on the Civil Code, the Cybersecurity Law, the Data Security Law, the Copyright Law, the Personal Information Protection Law and the Civil Procedure Law, among others. Regulayer labels it as judicial guidance, not legislation.

Does China now require verification of AI-generated court filings?

Yes, as national judicial guidance since 7 September 2026. Article 19 directs litigation participants who submit litigation documents, case search reports and similar materials generated with AI to verify the truthfulness and accuracy of the relevant laws, judicial interpretations and cases before submitting them to the court, to explain the AI assistance when submitting them, and to bear legal responsibility for the truthfulness and accuracy of the content. This is Regulayer's working translation; no official English text has been published.

What do the Opinions say about electronic evidence?

Article 18 directs courts to focus their review on the truthfulness and integrity of the process by which electronic data was generated, collected, stored and transmitted, with different review points for big-data analysis reports and for blockchain-stored evidence. Article 17 allows a court to find an assertion established where the party controlling documentary or electronic evidence refuses to produce it without proper reason.