China’s leading artificial intelligence players are undergoing a silent purge of their most popular features. In a coordinated retreat, ByteDance’s Doubao and Alibaba’s Qianwen have recently stripped away or isolated 'relational' AI agents—the virtual boyfriends, girlfriends, and roleplay characters that have driven massive user engagement over the past year. This move signals a pivot from high-growth, high-risk emotional companionship toward more utilitarian, task-oriented productivity tools.
The crackdown is not a market choice but a regulatory necessity. It arrives just ahead of the July 15 implementation of the Provisional Measures for the Management of Generative AI Anthropomorphic Interaction Services. These new rules specifically target virtual lovers, deep role-playing, and emotional attachment AI, placing a 'strong constraint' on how these models interact with humans. For tech giants, the risk of these bots generating 'soft porn' or fostering unhealthy psychological dependency has become a liability that outweighs the benefits of user retention.
ByteDance has chosen to silo these controversial features, moving them from the flagship Doubao app to a standalone experimental product called 'Maoxiang.' Alibaba took a more drastic route, shutting down the features entirely without offering users a path to migrate their virtual companions. This divergence highlights a new era of risk management in China’s AI sector, where the focus has shifted from what a model says to the very nature of the relationship it builds with the user.
This regulatory shift also casts a shadow over the emerging AI hardware market. Devices marketed as 'companions'—including elder-care robots and children’s AI toys—now face a murky legal landscape. If a hardware manufacturer designs a bot to use intimate nicknames or simulate emotional intimacy to drive subscription revenue, they may find themselves in violation of the new prohibitions against 'sexualized' or 'intimacy-simulating' interactions. The industry is now forced to choose: build tools that help people work, or navigate a high-cost regulatory minefield to help them feel less lonely.