Recently, the calligraphy award-winning work “Emergency Publicity in Dongguan” published by the Dongguan Emergency Management Bureau has been questioned for being AI-generated. In response, the official statement mentioned that it has been removed from the list of winners.
On July 14th, a netizen raised doubts on a social media platform regarding the second-round list of winners for the “2026 Dongguan Emergency Excellent Works Collection and Exhibition Activities”, specifically questioning the calligraphy art second prize-winning piece “Emergency Publicity in Dongguan” for potentially being AI-generated.
The netizen pointed out three obvious flaws in the work: uniformity in the size and height of Chinese characters, consistent spacing and lack of natural variations in strokes as seen in human handwriting; punctuation marks such as commas and periods displayed identical forms at the end of phrases; the horizontal writing style, usage of simplified characters and punctuation, which deviated significantly from traditional calligraphic practices.
This post quickly sparked attention across social media platforms.
A mobile phone reviewer and influential Weibo blogger, “Tech King Tengxiao,” commented, “An AI calligraphy work received a second prize. Honestly, this looks totally artificial with a strong AI flavor. Who could write punctuation marks like this? It’s almost identical. In theory, shouldn’t it be obvious that this is AI-generated? Can you tell?”
Other users commented, “The consistency in line thickness and pen strokes cannot be achieved by hand.” “Are the judges’ eyesight that poor? We can all see that it’s fake!” “At first glance, it’s clearly AI-generated. Are the judges even professionals? How could they not see it?” “Obvious fake, I can’t believe no one noticed.” “Are the judges’ skills that low? Maybe they shouldn’t be judges.”
On July 15th, the staff from the Publicity and Information Department of the Dongguan Emergency Management Bureau responded to the media, stating that after an internal investigation, it was confirmed that the work was AI-generated content, and it has been removed from the list of winners.
Public information indicates that the “2026 Dongguan Emergency Publicity Excellent Works Collection and Exhibition Activities” was organized by the Dongguan Production Safety Committee Office, with the Dongguan Emergency Management Bureau as the main sponsor. The works categories included video new media, graphic design, artistic calligraphy, photo images, literary programs, and science popularization explanations, with six first prizes, twelve second prizes, eighteen third prizes, and thirty outstanding works all together.