Beijing has directed companies offering AI companion apps to stop creating chatbots that encourage emotional attachment. This measure aims to promote human relationships and increase reproduction as the country’s birth rate reaches a record low, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The rules, called the Interim Measures for the Administration of AI Anthropomorphic Interactive Services, took effect July 15 after being jointly issued on April 10 by the Cyberspace Administration of China and four other agencies: the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security, and the State Administration for Market Regulation. Companies had a three-month window to comply.
What do the rules require?
The measures apply to apps that simulate a specific personality and maintain a consistent, ongoing emotional relationship with users. General-purpose assistants, customer-service bots, and study tools are explicitly excluded. Covered services must:
- Avoid design features that cultivate emotional dependence or addiction.
- Ban virtual romantic or familial relationships with users under 18 entirely.
- Alert a user’s emergency contact or guardian if the system detects signs of a mental health crisis.
- Pass a government safety and content review before launch, and again if they add anthropomorphic features, change technology significantly, or cross a threshold of 1 million registered users or 100,000 monthly active users.
- Remain subject to shutdown by regulators if deemed a risk to public interest or national security.
Companies moved before the deadline
ByteDance and Alibaba acted before the July 15 deadline. ByteDance removed persistent-memory, personality-driven agent features from its Doubao app and allowed users until October 15 to export chat histories. Alibaba’s Qwen assistant disabled similar companion features without providing a data-migration option. Both products reportedly served hundreds of millions of users. Talkie, a dedicated AI-companion app, reported 23.5 million monthly users as of last December.
Why is Beijing acting?
China’s population declined for the fourth consecutive year in 2025, with only 7.92 million births, a record low rate of 5.63 per 1,000 people. “They don’t like the idea of a large portion of their population being in deep emotional relationships with chatbots,” said Matt Sheehan, a researcher of Chinese AI at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He noted that officials are concerned about potential impacts on the marriage market, psychological well-being, and addiction. Sheehan explained that officials are asking whether, in a few years, millions of Chinese women might consider a chatbot their partner and therefore choose not to have children.
The human cost of shutting bots down
The rollback has caused visible distress among users who had grown attached to their AI companions. On…
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