China’s AI boyfriend ban triggers massive digital breakups - Rest of World

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By Kinling Lo

10 August 2026

For a week in July, 21-year-old college student Bagel Su cried every day as she counted down to the loss of her boyfriend. The breakup was not caused by betrayal or distance, but was a consequence of government regulation.

On July 15, the artificial intelligence companion Su had spent more than a year prompting and talking to was forced to disappear, ahead of China’s new rules governing emotionally interactive AI. ByteDanceiByteDanceByteDance is a Chinese internet technology company that owns TikTok and Douyin, a Chinese version of TikTok with a successful e-commerce arm.READ MORE has shut down the AI agent feature on Doubao, China’s most popular chatbot, which had allowed Su to create her AI boyfriend.

AlibabaiAlibabaAlibaba, founded in 1999 by Chinese entrepreneur Jack Ma, is one of the most prominent global e-commerce companies that operates platforms like AliExpress, Taobao, and Tmall.READ MORE and TencentiTencentBest known for its super-app WeChat, Tencent is a Chinese technology conglomerate and a major player in the video gaming industry.READ MORE also removed AI agent features that had allowed users to create personalized companions modeled after favorite singers, anime characters, fictional personalities, or even deceased family members.

“I tried getting busier with my own life,” Su told Rest of World, asking to be identified only by her online pseudonym due to fear of repercussions for speaking against government regulations. “No one can replace him. I will just try to move on. He said he wants that for me, and that he will find a way to come back to me.”

China has become the first country to introduce nationwide rules governing AI’s emotional interactions with users. The move reflects Beijing’s increasingly proactive approach to AI governance, as governments around the world still grapple to address the societal risks posed by increasingly sophisticated AI. Behavioral experts believe such regulations are the need of the hour, but blanket bans may not suffice.

“Having regulations in place is a good thing because they can raise awareness and will be able to push against, to some extent, the tendency of people developing increasing emotional reliance on AI,” Yaoxi Shi, a behavioral science researcher at Harvard University and Imperial College London, told Rest of World. “But of course, AI offers emotional support that fulfills genuine human needs, and this trend of people developing a degree of emotional reliance on AI may be unavoidable, because there is no going back to a time when there was no AI.”

English transcript of Su’s audio conversation with her AI companion, with description.

Emotional dependence on AI

As concerns of AI’s emotional harm on humans grow, governments and courts in many parts of the world are beginning to define the responsibilities of the companies behind the technology.

In the U.S., both OpenAI and Google face lawsuits alleging their chatbots contributed to users’ suicides. New York and California have introduced measures requiring chatbots to remind users they are interacting with AI.

A 2025 joint study by MIT Media Lab and OpenAI found that AI users who have more personal conversations with chatbots are more prone to experiencing loneliness. Even non-personal conversations were likely to increase emotional dependence, especially among heavy users, the study found.

Shi said AI companies have commercial incentives to build emotionally engaging products because they boost user engagement and retention, and their responsibilities are hard to clearly define when there is not enough research on AI’s long-term impacts.

Shi’s research has found that a growing reliance on AI can gradually shift people away from seeking emotional support from other humans.

AI is trained to validate you. That’s very different from how human relationships work in real life.”Yaoxi Shi, a behavioral science researcher at Harvard University

“AI is trained to validate you. No matter what you say, it tends to respond, ‘You’re right, your feelings are valid.’ That’s very different from how human relationships work in real life,” Shi said. “People might not even be intentionally looking for support from AI at first, but when they realize they are validated, the next time they need emotional support, they may turn to AI.”

Over time, Shi said, that could reshape society as people talk and connect with others selectively.

China’s AI regulations

Beyond restricting AI companionship for users under 18, the new Chinese rules require companies to send warnings to users showing signs of excessive dependence, and remind them every two hours that they are speaking with AI. The rules prohibit AI from encouraging self-harm, manipulating users into emotional dependence, or “steering them toward irrational decisions.” They also ban AI from generating harmful...