China’s Regulators Take Aim at “AI Boyfriends”
Companion bots go dark in crackdown — 09 Sep 2026
In the first weeks of July, a wave of sad posts rolled through Chinese social media, as people lamented friends and lovers they were about to lose. The lost companions were generative AI chatbots that imitate people. Their users relied on them for advice, solace, support and, some say, love.
What doomed these bots was a set of new rules, issued by China’s Cyberspace Administration and other government agencies, to control “anthropomorphic AI interactive services.” In effect, as of 15 July, the regulations govern any AI that provides “continuous emotional interaction” by acting as if it possesses human personality traits, patterns of thought, and ways of communicating.
Before the rules could affect them, Alibaba, Bytedance, and Tencent—three giant providers of general-purpose AI chatbots, used by more than 500 million people—cut off users’ ability to tailor those chatbots to act like companions. That triggered July’s outpouring of heartbreak on social media.
The regulations require AI providers to assure their products don’t create emotional dependence, encourage harmful behavior, excessively cater to users, or crowd out human-to-human relationships. Users must be nudged not to spend too much time with the AI. For users under 18, AI boyfriends, girlfriends, grandparents, and all other “virtual intimate relationships” are banned.
Adults interacting with a companion AI must now get a reminder every 2 hours that the AI isn’t a person.
The Chinese government is not the only state power concerned about the potential harms of person-like, emotionally engaging AI. With reports of AI friends and lovers inducing psychosis, suicide, and murder in teenagers and adults, a number of social scientists warn that AI companions are a menace to vulnerable people.
China’s response is “the world’s strictest and most comprehensive law on the topic, unmatched by any other AI law,” the AI-law scholar Luiza Jarovsky wrote. The European Union bans only AI that uses deception or manipulation to get users to do things that are harmful. In the United States, there is no national policy. Rules that cover companion-like bots are in force in California, Hawaii, and New York, with similar laws coming into effect in nine more states next year.
The 15 July rules forbid companion bots to generate content that “spreads rumors,” incites “subversion of state power or the overthrow of the socialist system,” or endangers national honor. Another motivation for concerns about AI romance is anxiety about the country’s declining birthrate.
The new regulations state that they don’t apply to customer service bots, work assistants, and educational AIs, on the assumption that these desirable uses of AI don’t create ongoing emotional connections.