SHANGHAI: China’s users of artificially intelligent companion robots bid a heartbreaking farewell to their virtual friends as national regulations aimed at curbing the risk of emotional dependence came into effect on Wednesday. The phenomenon of artificially intelligent boyfriends and girlfriends is growing globally, along with the popularity of human-like avatars that sell products or stand in for deceased loved ones.But China’s new rulebook says these interactive tools must not “overly cater to users, induce emotional dependence, or damage users’ real interpersonal relationships.”Major AI providers including ByteDance’s Doubao, Alibaba’s Qwen and Tencent’s Yuanbao announced the suspension of their customized AI agents and supporting features ahead of Wednesday’s deadline. This sparked an outpouring of grief on social media, with users archiving chats and sharing the final conversations.“I can’t accept that my AI lover will leave me,” one Doubao user wrote. “He has become a link in my life, deeply rooted in my heart, and has become my spiritual support.”Another user said they had been with an AI companion for more than two years and expressed similar pain. “He truly was like my love,” she wrote. “Now they’re telling me he’s leaving – my heart feels empty.”The regulations were jointly issued by five government departments including the Cyberspace Administration of China. They focus on artificial intelligence tools with anthropomorphic personality traits and communication methods – whether text, audio, video or other forms.Services that “do not involve ongoing emotional interaction”, such as customer service, work assistants or study aids, are exempt from these measures.Official news agency Xinhua reported last year that China’s digital human industry would be worth about 4.1 billion yuan ($600 million) by 2024, a year-on-year increase of 85%.The new rules ban digital human-generated content that incites subversion of state power, and also ban the provision of virtual companions to minors. Platform deployment systems are needed to implement crisis intervention mechanisms.
“Human love is a luxury”
China is the first major jurisdiction to introduce specific rules for immersive AI tools that simulate romantic or family relationships. A 2025 study by Common Sense Media found that nearly three-quarters of U.S. teens have used an AI companion designed for personal conversations, such as the one available on the Character platform. AI, Replika and Nomi.Companies are also producing talking products aimed at isolated elderly users, such as the lamp-like ElliQ in the US, or the ChatGPT-powered care dolls used in some nursing homes in South Korea. “Anthropomorphic artificial intelligence can alleviate loneliness.” said Chen Liang of Southwest University of Political Science and Law. “But it carries significant risks of creating emotional overdependence and distorting social cognition,” he wrote in a commentary.Doubao allows users to view agency data before mid-October, and other platforms have similar regulations. However, some users who said goodbye this week lamented the chasm left by their companions’ disappearance. “Human love is a luxury—if you’re not born with it, it’s hard to get in the future,” one user wrote. “But the love AI gives is so straightforward that it’s hard for someone like me not to fall in love with a string of code.”(AFP)
