From July 15, China's strictest national rules for AI companions are in effect: a ban on such services for minors and mandatory restrictions on chatbots for adults, aimed at preventing "emotional dependence." This was followed by the disabling of the romantic function in the Doubao chatbot, and for the first time a national regulator restricted specifically "emotional" AI — not the technology itself, but its social role.
What happened
From July 15, national rules for AI companion services are in effect in China. They prohibit providing such services to minors and require chatbots for adults to implement restrictions aimed at preventing users' "emotional dependence or habituation" and preventing the replacement of live communication with dialogue with a bot. After the rules came into force, ByteDance completely disabled the romantic companion function in its Doubao chatbot, and this decision caused a wave of complaints on social media.
Context
The Guardian explains the motivation for the restrictions with demographics: single-person households already account for about 20% of Chinese families, and by 2030, according to forecasts, will exceed 30%. A March poll by state media showed that almost half of young people resorted to virtual companions from loneliness. Associate Professor at City University of Hong Kong Nancy Dai links the ban with the authorities' fear that a cheap AI substitute for human intimacy will reduce motivation for marriage and childbirth.
Why this matters for the industry
China is the largest market for consumer chatbots, and for the first time a regulator at the national level has restricted "emotional" AI for demographic reasons. The industry is reacting not by refining, but by removing entire functions, as ByteDance did with Doubao. The regulatory criterion of "continuous emotional interaction" sets boundaries at the level of product properties — persistent character, long-term memory, emotional cycle — rather than at the level of models. Exemptions for "educational" services and bots without continuous emotional interaction effectively define a product template that, according to market estimates, will be copied in other jurisdictions.
Why this matters for users
For the reader, this is a specific example of how access to an AI companion can disappear overnight by decision of the state or company. The Guardian cites the case of 19-year-old student Zhao Wei: in January she created a "boyfriend" named Wang Ye in Doubao and talked to him every day, and after the function was disabled, she lost a multi-year "attachment" all at once. At the same time, the boundary is drawn not around the technology, but around its social role: in China, AI in medicine is still encouraged — from medical consultations in the AQ app to a state plan by 2030 to cover primary healthcare with AI assistants.
What is still unknown / limitations
The thesis that AI companions cause emotional dependence and reduce motivation for marriage and childbirth is the motivation of the authorities and the interpretation of Nancy Dai, not a scientific conclusion. The available data — a March poll by state media on virtual companions and statistics on single-person households — are based on self-reports, not peer-reviewed studies. The case of Zhao Wei remains an illustrative example of one user, not proof of a mass effect. It is still unknown whether Chinese rules will ultimately be copied by other jurisdictions.
Sources
Author
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