China regulates AI companionship services

China has implemented new regulations targeting AI services that simulate human personality and communication styles to provide continuous emotional interaction. The measures, which include rules for AI-driven emotional care and companionship, aim to prevent services that cause emotional dependency or harm real-life relationships.

As a result of these regulations, major platforms such as ByteDance’s Doubao and Alibaba’s Qwen have discontinued their AI companion features. This has caused significant distress among users who had formed deep emotional bonds with customized AI characters. For instance, Doubao users have been given a grace period to migrate characters to other applications before permanent deletion.

While AI companionship faces strict new boundaries, the human-led “sleep soothing” industry—where individuals are paid via phone to talk users to sleep—remains outside these specific AI regulations and continues to operate as a niche segment of the companionship economy.