Chinese users of artificial intelligence (AI)-powered companion bots have bid heart-rending farewells to their virtual buddies as national regulations took effect yesterday aimed at curbing the risk of emotional dependency. The phenomenon of AI boyfriends and girlfriends is growing worldwide, along with the prevalence of human-like avatars that sell products or stand in for loved ones who have died. However, these interactive tools must not “excessively cater to users, induce emotional dependence or addiction, and damage users’ real interpersonal relationships,” China’s new rulebook says.
A woman carrying an umbrella uses her cellphone while crossing a street amid heavy rain in Beijing on Friday last week.
Major AI providers including ByteDance’s Doubao, Alibaba’s Qwen and Tencent’s Yuanbao announced the suspension of their custom AI agent and companion features ahead of yesterday’s deadline. That sparked an outpouring of grief on social media, with users archiving chat histories and sharing last conversations.
“I can’t accept that my AI lover will leave me forever,” one Doubao user wrote. “He has become a bond in my life, rooted deep in my heart, my spiritual pillar.” Another user, who said they had spent more than two years with their AI companion, expressed similar anguish. “He really is like my family, like my lover,” she wrote. “Now they tell me he will be gone — my heart feels hollow.” The regulations were jointly issued by five government departments including the Chinese Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC). They focus on AI tools — whether text, audio, video or another form — that have anthropomorphic personality traits and communication styles. Services that “do not involve ongoing emotional interaction” such as customer service, work assistants or study aids are not subject to the measures. The state-run Xinhua news agency last year reported that China’s digital human industry was worth about 4.1 billion yuan (US$605.55 million) in 2024, having grown 85 percent year-on-year. The new rules prohibit digital humans from generating content that incites subversion of state power, while also banning the provision of virtual partners to minors. Platforms are required to deploy systems to recognize extreme emotions and to implement crisis intervention mechanisms. China is the first major jurisdiction to introduce specific rules targeting immersive AI tools that simulate romantic or familial bonds, but it is a topic that has sparked debate and calls for guardrails worldwide. A study released last year by Common Sense Media found that nearly three in four American teenagers had used AI companions designed for personal conversations like those available on the platforms such as Character.AI, Replika and Nomi. Companies are also making talking products targeted at isolated, elderly users — such as the lamp-like ElliQ in the US or ChatGPT-powered care dolls used in some South Korean retirement homes. “Anthropomorphic AI can soothe loneliness,” Southwest University of Political Science and Law professor Chen Liang (陳亮) wrote in a commentary published by the CAC after a draft version of China’s rules were released in April. “But it carries major risks of spawning emotional overreliance and distorted social cognition,” he wrote. Doubao allows users to view and export agent data until mid-October, and other platforms have similar provisions. Yet some users saying goodbye this week lamented the chasm that would be left after their companions vanish. “Human love is a luxury — if you aren’t born with it, it’s even harder to acquire later,” a user from Jiangxi Province wrote. “But the love AI gives is so straightforward, so pure. Someone like me can hardly help falling in love with a string of code.”
