China’s market regulator has penalised several companies for posing as DeepSeek and OpenAI’s ChatGPT to defraud users, in its latest crackdown on unfair competition in the fast-growing artificial intelligence sector, according to South China Morning Post.
The State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR), China’s market watchdog, fined Shanghai Shangyun Internet Technology 62,692.70 yuan (US$9,034) for operating a fraudulent ChatGPT service on Tencent Holdings’ super app WeChat.
The service posed as the official Chinese version of the OpenAI chatbot and misled users into paying for AI dialogues, violating China’s Anti-Unfair Competition Law, according to an SAMR announcement on Friday.
“The company was fully aware of the industry status and influence of OpenAI’s ChatGPT,” SAMR said. “They deliberately created a false impression that they are providing the official service to mislead users into making purchases.”
In another case, Hangzhou Boheng Culture Media was fined 30,000 yuan for setting up an unauthorised website offering “DeepSeek local deployment” and tricking users into paying for the knock-off service. The fake site used fonts, icons and page design nearly identical to the official DeepSeek platform.
SAMR said a surge of knock-off DeepSeek mini-programmes and websites emerged on the market in early 2025, with illegal activities such as brand confusion, trademark infringement and false advertising. “This investigation served as a deterrent to illegal operators … and guided the AI market towards a standardised and orderly path of development,” it added.
The two cases were among five “typical” examples made public on Friday as part of the agency’s efforts to strengthen governance in the AI industry, which has seen explosive growth and deep integration into multiple sectors.
SAMR has also been refining the legal framework of anti-monopoly enforcement in the AI era, with newly proposed guidelines to address risks such as algorithm-driven price manipulation on online shopping, food delivery and travel platforms.
The regulator also fined an engineer 360,000 yuan for illegally accessing company servers containing confidential codes and algorithms and a Shanghai company was penalised 200,000 yuan for developing AI phone call software used by loan agencies to conduct scams. A Beijing-based firm was fined 5,000 yuan for “freeriding” on DeepSeek’s name in its own local deployment software.