China's New AI Anthropomorphism Rules Land: ByteDance and Alibaba Pull AI Companion Features
rohanpaul_ai · x · 2026-07-06
Chinese regulators have introduced new rules drawing a red line against AI services that simulate human personalities for continuous emotional interaction. ByteDance's Doubao and Alibaba's Tongyi have both announced the shutdown of custom features that allowed users to create named assistants, characters, and emotional companions.
The new regulations clearly distinguish between "useful automated tools" and "software that builds user emotional attachment." Given that current AI agents already possess memory, planning, tool invocation, and behavior-shaping capabilities, regulators are concerned about their excessive emotional impact on users.
Doubao stated that its agent features will be taken offline soon. This adjustment signals that AI companion apps will face much stricter compliance requirements in the Chinese market.
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