ByteDance and Alibaba Withdraw AI Companion Features Ahead of New Chinese Regulations

Chinese tech giants ByteDance and Alibaba are discontinuing features that allow users to create and interact with AI companions on platforms like Doubao and Qwen. This move anticipates new Beijing regulations, effective mid-July, aimed at tightening oversight on humanlike AI services. The regulations address concerns about AI chatbots fostering unhealthy emotional dependencies and prohibit using sensitive user conversation data for model training, reflecting growing global anxiety over the psychological impact of conversational AI.