Beijing Defines Criminal Liability for AI Training Systems: Deletion of Model Data Constitutes Computer Information System Crime

According to monitoring by Dongcha Beating, the Beijing People’s Procuratorate has released the “White Paper on Intellectual Property Prosecution by Beijing Procuratorial Organs (2025)”, which reveals that in 2025, procuratorial organs in the city handled 113 intellectual property cases related to artificial intelligence and data factor industries. The white paper highlights two landmark cases in the AI field. The Dongcheng District Procuratorate handled Beijing’s first case of illegal deletion of AI model training data. An employee intentionally deleted a large amount of data used for training the AI model, resulting in structural damage to the training system and significant economic losses. The procuratorial organ filed a public prosecution for the crime of damaging a computer information system. The white paper states that this case has led to the recognition of AI model training systems as “computer information systems” in the criminal law sense. This charge has previously mainly targeted traditional information systems such as servers and databases that have been invaded or damaged, and the criminal classification of AI training data and systems was not clear before. The Tongzhou District Procuratorate handled Beijing’s first case of copyright infringement using AI-generated models. Four defendants profited by unauthorized copying of others’ works using AI technology and were sentenced for copyright infringement. Throughout 2025, Beijing’s procuratorial organs handled a total of 1,195 intellectual property cases, an increase of 10.34% year-on-year.