China’s first regulations on AI companion services have come into effect, placing new restrictions on chatbots designed to simulate emotional bonds with users and banning platforms from offering virtual partners or relatives to minors.
The regulation was jointly issued by the Cyberspace Administration of China and four other government departments in April and went into effect on July 15. The rule targets AI products designed to mimic human personalities, emotions, and communication styles.
The move comes after years of increased use of AI companion apps in China, where users have created virtual lovers modeled after TV characters, recreated deceased relatives through customized voices and personalities, and treated chatbots as long-term soul buddies.
Regulators and state media have warned that these apps pose security and compliance risks, including psychological addiction, sexually suggestive content and weak protections for minors.
The new regulation therefore prohibits AI apps from producing content for minors that could incite dangerous behavior, provoke extreme emotions, or promote habits that could harm physical or mental health. You should also not overly accommodate users in ways that induce emotional dependence or addiction and damage real-life relationships. Manipulating users’ emotions to encourage them to make irrational decisions that harm their legitimate rights and interests. Act as a virtual kin or partner to minors.
If a user is, or appears to be, overly dependent on a service, the platform must send a reminder to the user about overuse every two hours.
Zhang Linghan, director of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Law at China University of Political Science and Law, told domestic media outlet China News Weekly that the emotional investment provided by anthropomorphic interactive services can easily lead to psychological dependence in users, resulting in a decline in real-world social skills, especially the ability to resolve emotional conflicts and build deep relationships.
The new regulations apply to services deemed to be designed to facilitate emotional connections and interactions. Other AI chatbot features such as intelligent customer service, knowledge sharing tools, and workplace assistants are not affected.
On the same day the regulation went into effect, tech giants ByteDance and Alibaba discontinued AI companion features for Doubao and Qianwen, respectively. While Qianwen immediately suspended its companion service, Doubao is offering users a three-month grace period to migrate their data to its sister app, Maoxiang, before it is permanently removed on October 15th.
Technology companies had already begun to tighten regulations on chatbots and companion services, primarily due to the discovery of suggestive content within chats. On June 30th, Tencent removed the AI companion service from its chatbot “Yuanbao”.
In April 2023, MiniMax, a leading Chinese AI model development company, removed its AI companion product Glow from multiple app stores due to pornographic content. The company’s product manager told domestic media that “80% of users will have suggestive or sexually explicit conversations with the AI companions they create within Glow.”
In June 2025, the AI chat app Zhumengdao was summoned to appear before the Shanghai Cyberspace Bureau for generating vulgar and provocative content that harmed minors.
After the new regulation went into effect, several other AI chatbots reported an influx of users migrating from Doubo and Preamble and began requiring ID verification before use.
Editor: Marianne Gunnarson.
(Header image: Malte Mueller/Getty Creative/VCG)
