AI Regulation Tracker / Filing register update

China CAC Publishes GenAI Filing Batch for May-June 2026

On July 10, 2026, the Cyberspace Administration of China published its latest generative AI filing batch under the Interim Measures. 120 new services completed national filing and 68 apps completed local registration, bringing cumulative totals to 988 and 598. This is a routine administrative register update, not a new rule and not an enforcement action.

By Anthony Guerriero · The Leveraged Years Regulatory Research · Published July 15, 2026 · Last updated September 19, 2026

The short version

On July 10, 2026, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) published the filed information for generative AI services covering May and June 2026. In that window, 120 new GenAI services completed national filing and 68 apps and functions completed local registration. As of June 30, 2026, the cumulative totals reached 988 filed services and 598 registered apps and functions. This announcement reports completed filings and registrations under the existing Interim Measures; no publication schedule is stated. For services with public opinion attributes or social mobilisation capability, filing has been required under Article 17 of those measures since they took effect, so the register is the published list of completed filings and registrations. Nothing new was required and no enforcement action was announced. For US and other foreign providers, the point is simple: a GenAI service offered to the Chinese public with public opinion attributes or social mobilisation capability, including through a joint venture or local entity, carries the Article 17 assessment and filing obligations, and apps or functions that directly call a filed model go through local registration.

Regulatory Briefing

Instrument: Administrative announcement, 关于发布生成式人工智能服务已备案信息的公告（2026年5月至6月）(Announcement Publishing Filed-Information of Generative AI Services, May to June 2026)
Authority: 国家互联网信息办公室, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC)
Legal basis: 《生成式人工智能服务管理暂行办法》, the Interim Measures for the Management of Generative AI Services
Jurisdiction: People's Republic of China
Bindingness: Routine register update. The filing duty it reflects is binding, but this announcement creates no new duty and is not an enforcement action.
What Changed: The published register grew. 120 new services filed and 68 apps and functions registered for May to June 2026; cumulative 988 filed and 598 registered as of June 30, 2026.
Who This Affects: Providers offering public-facing GenAI in China with public opinion attributes or social mobilisation capability, including foreign firms operating through a joint venture or local entity. For US providers, this is a scoped compliance step: Article 17 security-assessment and filing duties where the service has public-opinion attributes or social-mobilisation capability, Article 23 licensing and foreign-investment rules preserved for any China-based entity, and Article 20 exposure to technical or other measures if the service is supplied from outside China into China, together with a pace signal on how fast the filing and registration tracks are moving.
Primary Source: CAC announcement, cac.gov.cn
Last Verified: July 15, 2026

On July 10, 2026, the Cyberspace Administration of China published the filed information for generative AI services covering the May to June 2026 period. The announcement opens by stating its purpose plainly: 促进生成式人工智能服务创新发展和规范应用，网信部门会同有关部门按照《生成式人工智能服务管理暂行办法》要求，持续开展生成式人工智能服务备案工作。 In plain English, to promote the innovative development and regulated use of generative AI services, the cyberspace authorities, working with relevant departments, continue to carry out filing work for generative AI services in line with the Interim Measures. That word, continue, is the whole story. This reports an ongoing filing process.

What the numbers say

The batch itself is a set of counts. For May and June 2026, 120 new generative AI services completed national filing, the process known as 备案, and 68 apps and functions completed local registration, the process known as 登记. Add those to what came before and the running totals as of June 30, 2026 stand at 988 services filed and 598 apps and functions registered.

Two things are worth separating. Filing (备案) is the national-level record of a generative AI service that falls under Article 17. Registration (登记) is the local record for apps and functions that directly call an already-filed model through an API or other means. They are different tracks, which is why the two cumulative figures do not match. Neither is a quality endorsement, and neither certifies that every other requirement to operate has been met; Article 23 separately preserves licensing and foreign-investment rules.

The scale is the useful part. Nearly a thousand filed services as of 30 June 2026 is a large, active filing regime; this announcement reports one two-month window, not a month-by-month series. The batch cadence, published in named windows like this one, gives you a running read on how fast the Chinese GenAI market is being formalized.

What this is, and what it is not

I want to be careful here, because a CAC announcement with a big number attached invites over-reading.

This is a register update. The filing regime it reflects has been in force since the Interim Measures took effect, and filing has been required the entire time for services with public opinion attributes or social mobilisation capability (Article 17). What happened on July 10 is that CAC published the latest batch of completed filings and registrations. No new obligation was created. No standard changed. No company was named for enforcement.

It is also not the same thing as China's other AI-governance activity. This is not the Qinglang enforcement campaigns, and it is not the separate measures aimed at anthropomorphic or companion AI. Do not fold those together. A routine filing batch is exactly that: an administrative list, published for the stated reporting window, under a law that was already on the books.

Why US and foreign providers should note it

If you have no ambition to serve the Chinese public, this is a data point about market pace and nothing more. If you do, or you might, the first question is whether Article 17 applies to the service and which filing or registration route the announcements describe. A generative AI service offered to users in China with public opinion attributes or social mobilisation capability has to be filed under Article 17 of the Interim Measures, and that applies to foreign firms operating through a joint venture or a local entity just as it applies to domestic ones. For those services, Article 17 sets the obligations: a security assessment under national rules and algorithm filing under the Algorithm Recommendation Provisions; the announcement describes filing and local registration as the two routes it records, not the published list as a permission to launch.

Beyond your own plans, the register is a strategic signal. A filing regime that has cleared 988 services is not a pilot. It is a mature, running system, and on this desk's reading, the batch releases signal that the filing and registration tracks are being run at scale. For anyone tracking where global AI governance is heading, the pace of this list is worth watching even if you never file against it.

What to do now

If you are weighing a China-facing GenAI offering, first determine whether Article 17 applies to it, then identify the route the announcement records, national filing for the service or local registration for an app or function that calls a filed model, and build the lead time into any launch plan. If you already operate there through a partner, verify the applicable record rather than assuming your local entity handled it. And keep the framing straight: this is a routine administrative update, so do not report it to your board as a crackdown or a new rule. It reports completed filings and registrations under the existing regime; no schedule is stated. Any decision you make should rest on qualified China counsel, not on a batch announcement read at a distance.

Update, September 18, 2026. On September 14, 2026, CAC published the next batch in this series, covering July and August 2026. In that window, 124 new GenAI services completed national filing (备案) and 133 apps and functions completed local registration (登记). As of August 31, 2026, the cumulative totals stood at 1,112 filed services and 731 registered apps and functions. The announcement also states that GenAI apps and functions already online are to display, in a prominent position or on the product detail page, the filed or registered service they use, giving the model name and the filing number (备案号) or launch number (上线编号). Like the May to June batch, this is a routine register update under the existing Interim Measures, not a new rule and not an enforcement action. The figures in the sections above describe the earlier batch.

Questions professionals are asking

Did China issue a new AI rule on July 10, 2026?

No. CAC published a routine batch of filed-information for generative AI services covering May and June 2026. It is a register update under the existing Interim Measures. It does not create, change, or remove any rule or legal duty.

What do the numbers 120, 68, 988, and 598 mean?

For May to June 2026, 120 new GenAI services completed national filing (备案) and 68 apps and functions completed local registration (登记). As of June 30, 2026, the cumulative totals were 988 filed services and 598 registered apps and functions.

Is filing legally required to offer GenAI in China?

For services with public opinion attributes or social mobilisation capability, yes: Article 17 of the Interim Measures requires a security assessment under national rules and algorithm filing under the Algorithm Recommendation Provisions. The register is the published list of services that have cleared that step.

Does this apply to US or other foreign providers?

Yes, to the extent they offer the public in China a GenAI service with public-opinion attributes or social-mobilisation capability. A foreign firm operating through a joint venture or local entity carries the same Article 17 security-assessment and algorithm-filing duties as a domestic provider where that scope applies, and Article 23 separately preserves any licensing and foreign-investment requirements applicable to the venture. The duty attaches to services offered to the public in China; services supplied from outside China into China are addressed separately by Article 20, which lets the national cyberspace authority order technical and other measures against non-compliant ones.

Is this connected to China's AI enforcement campaigns?

No. This is a routine filing register update. It is separate from the Qinglang enforcement campaigns and from the distinct measures on anthropomorphic or companion AI. Treating a filing batch as a crackdown would misread it.