Overview
- China’s Cyberspace Administration and partner agencies issued the “Interim Measures for the Administration of AI Anthropomorphic Interactive Services,” which took legal effect on July 15, 2026.
- The rules bar AI services designed to create emotional dependence, require age verification and parental consent for minors, and mandate features such as instant-exit, regular reminders the AI is not real, limits on long-term emotional memory, and crisis-intervention measures.
- Major domestic platforms including ByteDance, Alibaba, Tencent and NetEase have removed or suspended personalised companion features rather than build the required safeguards.
- Millions of users lost active companions and some firms offered limited read-only access or export windows for chat histories, with ByteDance’s Doubao providing an export deadline of October 15.
- Regulators framed the policy around mental-health and demographic concerns about declining marriage and birth rates, and analysts say China’s rules set a new international precedent that will shift product design and market opportunities toward non-emotional AI services.