  With the widespread use of large artificial intelligence (AI) models such as
ChatGPT, AI-generated content (AIGC) has garnered increasing attention and is
leading a paradigm shift in content creation and knowledge representation. AIGC
uses generative large AI algorithms to assist or replace humans in creating
massive, high-quality, and human-like content at a faster pace and lower cost,
based on user-provided prompts. Despite the recent significant progress in
AIGC, security, privacy, ethical, and legal challenges still need to be
addressed. This paper presents an in-depth survey of working principles,
security and privacy threats, state-of-the-art solutions, and future challenges
of the AIGC paradigm. Specifically, we first explore the enabling technologies,
general architecture of AIGC, and discuss its working modes and key
characteristics. Then, we investigate the taxonomy of security and privacy
threats to AIGC and highlight the ethical and societal implications of GPT and
AIGC technologies. Furthermore, we review the state-of-the-art AIGC
watermarking approaches for regulatable AIGC paradigms regarding the AIGC model
and its produced content. Finally, we identify future challenges and open
research directions related to AIGC.
