China’s highest court says that while it handles AI-related cases with care it has allowed room for the country’s artificial intelligence industry to innovate and make mistakes, according to its annual report.

Supreme People’s Court president Zhang Jun told the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s top legislative body, on Monday that the court had “promoted the orderly development of artificial intelligence” last year.

Delivering the supreme court’s work report, Zhang said China’s courts “properly adjudicated cases involving artificial intelligence” and “accurately grasped the ‘margin for error’ in technological innovation”.

The report cited an unspecified case in which a court had ruled that an error in a generative AI service did not constitute infringement because “the developer had exercised due diligence and caused no actual harm to the plaintiff’s rights”.

However, the report emphasised that it would apply “resolute legal regulation” to “acts that exploit artificial intelligence to infringe upon others’ lawful rights and interests or disrupt social order, thereby promoting technology for good”.

The report said that looking ahead, Chinese courts would “promote the orderly development of the digital economy, AI Plus and other sectors”.

In a separate report presented to the NPC, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate said China prosecuted 4,739 individuals last year in cases related to “data security breaches in fields such as artificial intelligence and e-commerce”.