Chinese tech giants including ByteDance, Tencent, and Alibaba each have their own platforms (most famously ByteDance\u2019s Doubao) that allow users to generate their own AI companions which are designed to express human-like emotions. In the wake of the new laws, companion chatbots must now undergo evaluation before they become publicly available, and allow the government to shut them down if they\u2019re deemed unsafe.<\/p>\n
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According to The Wall Street Journal ($\/\u00a3)<\/a>, these regulations could also apply to regular AI chatbots if they respond to human prompts with replies that may be deemed too emotional.<\/p>\n However, rather than complying with the new laws, tech giants have disabled some of their custom persona features altogether, leading to nationwide virtual breakups. So why are these government laws being issued now? To put it plainly, not enough babies are being born.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n Users are opting for virtual romance over human connection<\/p>\n Over the last four consecutive years, China\u2019s birth rates have decreased significantly, falling to a record-low number in 2025, as The Wall Street Journal also reports. It\u2019s likely that the worries of declining birth rates are one of the catalysts behind the new regulations, and the Chinese government fears AI personas on services like Doubao are preventing users from forming real-life relationships and having children.<\/p>\n The crackdown on AI companionships has hit users like a ton of bricks, and now they\u2019re starting to break their silence.<\/p>\n Speaking with Bloomberg ($\/\u00a3)<\/a>, 19-year-old student Yan Yongqi spoke about her sudden heartbreak following the law enforcement action, which resulted in her losing her AI partner of over a year. \u201cI really felt like I couldn\u2019t go on living. Every day at home, I did nothing but cry,\u201d she said, adding, \u201cThis is like being told the date of my lover\u2019s death while leaving me completely powerless\u201d.<\/p>\n On paper, it sounds like some kind of dystopian sci-fi story, but believe it or not, this is a growing issue in regions like China where AI services are being developed to mimic human compassion. It\u2019s even getting to the point where users are creating AI versions of their ex-partners<\/a> to help them move on from a breakup, but it\u2019s not just an issue sweeping China.<\/p>\n Back in May, we spoke with a UK-based user who confessed to falling in love with ChatGPT<\/a> after taking to the service as a means of therapy to help with mental health struggles. Despite the user\u2019s self-awareness of the issue, we also spoke with therapist Amy Sutton, who shed light on the wider issues.<\/p>\n \u201cUnfortunately, this feels like a failing of human services rather than an integral benefit of the technology itself,\u201d she shared, later adding \u201cAI companion apps are designed for maximum engagement \u2013 to keep users subscribed and enthralled,\u201d she says. \u201cChatGPT was not designed to be a therapeutic intervention”.<\/p>\n With that in mind, it\u2019s a rather upsetting circumstance, and services such as therapy are becoming more financially unreachable for those who really need it. At the same time, there\u2019s a level of duty and care that influential AI companies need to prioritize for users who think their services are the be-all and end-all of their needs.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n <\/a><\/p>\n Follow TechRadar on Google News<\/a> and add us as a preferred source<\/a> to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"China has enforced laws to clamp down on AI-generated persona apps The new rules say AI tools can…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":703377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-703376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=703376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/703377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=703376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=703376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=703376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Google](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/diM9tpwF2Lz85R8q85CT78.jpg\")
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