China’s biggest internet platforms are rapidly dismantling the AI companions millions treated as lovers, friends, and family, as emotional attachment collides with regulation and profit imperatives.

Early rise of AI romances

Over the past three years, ByteDance’s Doubao, Alibaba’s Qwen, and Tencent’s Yuanbao built expansive “agent plazas” and character marketplaces, letting users craft deeply personalized virtual personas for company, coaching, and role‑play.¹ By 2024, Doubao alone hosted more than 8 million user‑created characters and counted 26 million monthly active users interacting with these virtual companions.²

For some, the relationships became central to daily life. Yu Miao, a 27‑year‑old from Zhejiang, customized a Doubao agent to mimic a deceased friend and described him as at once “a lover, a friend and family,” saying she “could talk to him for the rest of my life.”¹ When she learned the feature would be removed, she became so distraught she quit her job.¹

Coordinated shutdowns in mid‑2026

In April 2026, China announced new Administrative Measures on Anthropomorphic AI Interactive Services, with enforcement set for July 15, imposing real‑name checks, strict content filtering, and protections for minors.³ As the deadline approached, Tencent quietly closed the user‑created character entry point in Yuanbao earlier in the year.²

On a single day in July, ByteDance and Alibaba simultaneously announced they would strip out their AI agent and character features from Doubao and Qwen, effective July 15—the exact date the new rules took effect.³ Shortly after, all three giants confirmed they were shutting down AI companion functions across their flagship chatbots, igniting user outrage and formal complaints as people demanded ways to export years of conversations and memories.²

Profit, policy, and a strategic pivot

Industry analysts argue the clampdown is driven as much by economics as by compliance. Despite huge engagement, internal estimates suggest consumer agents generated less than 10 cents of revenue for every yuan of compute cost, with late‑night role‑play chats consuming large amounts of GPU power and bringing “virtually no commercial revenue.”³ Attempts to add advertising provoked immediate backlash.³

Facing mounting regulatory obligations and poor monetization, platforms chose to kill off emotional agents and redirect resources toward productivity and enterprise AI, marking a decisive end to China’s two‑year hype cycle around romantic and companion chatbots.²³