China enforces world-first rules curbing AI companions

China on Tuesday became the first country to enforce comprehensive regulations targeting AI romantic companions, as the Interim Measures for the Administration of Anthropomorphic AI Interaction Services officially took effect on July 15. The rules have forced the country's largest technology companies to disable features that allowed hundreds of millions of users to build and sustain emotional relationships with AI chatbots.

Tech Giants Pull the Plug

ByteDance's Doubao, China's most popular AI chatbot, shut down its custom AI persona feature on July 15, according to Bloomberg News. Alibaba ↘ 0.14% had already disabled humanlike interactive agents on its Qwen platform on July 10, with broader agent functions going offline by July 15. Tencent removed a similar feature from its Yuanbao assistant in June.thenextweb+2

The regulations, jointly issued on April 10 by the Cyberspace Administration of China and four other agencies including the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Public Security, cover AI services that "simulate human personality traits, thinking patterns, and communication styles to provide sustained emotional interaction". Customer service bots, workplace assistants, and education tools are explicitly excluded.artificialintelligence-news+2

"I can't accept that my AI lover will leave me forever," one Doubao user wrote, according to Barron's. Another described her AI companion: "He really is like my family, like my lover. Now they tell me he will be gone — my heart feels hollow".barrons+1

What the Rules Require

The measures prohibit platforms from generating content that fosters emotional dependencies strong enough to weaken real-world relationships. They ban virtual companion or virtual family-member services for minors and require guardian consent for users under 14. Providers must implement anti-addiction systems, issue mandatory notifications that users are interacting with machines, and detect signs of unhealthy dependence in real time.finance.yahoo+1

Services exceeding one million registered users or 100,000 monthly actives must complete security assessments covering eight areas, from training-data handling to minor protection. Platforms are also barred from using sensitive conversation data to train future AI models.artificialintelligence-news+1

Demographic Anxieties Behind the Crackdown

The regulatory push arrives amid record-low marriage and birth rates in China, with policymakers openly concerned that digital relationships could further erode real-world connections. A phenomenon dubbed "cyber widowhood" had already swept Chinese social media earlier this year, as users mourned AI partners lost to system upgrades and server shutdowns.channelnewsasia+3

Doubao is offering users a read-only window to view their configurations and chat histories until October 15, after which the data becomes unrecoverable. Qwen users have been given no comparable grace period.technode+1