China's Cyberspace Administration has ordered major AI platforms to disable humanlike chatbot personas, effective April 1, 2026. This includes ByteDance's Doubao, Alibaba's Qwen, and Tencent's Yuanbao. Doubao, the most popular chatbot in China, will remove its persona feature on July 15, 2026, while Qwen will disable its human-like agents on July 10, 2026, with additional features going offline on July 15. Yuanbao already took similar action in June 2026. The regulations require providers to warn against excessive use and intervene when detecting addictive behavior. Content that triggers extreme emotions in minors or fosters dependencies that crowd out real-world relationships is banned. Training on sensitive conversation data is also prohibited. The trend is not limited to China. California has required companion AI providers to block conversations about suicide and self-harm since the start of 2026 under SB 243. In the US, OpenAI and Character.AI face lawsuits over dangerous emotional dependency.
The rules, issued by China's Cyberspace Administration in April 2026, take effect the same day. Providers must warn against excessive use and step in when they detect addictive behavior. Content that triggers extreme emotions in minors or fosters dependencies that crowd out real-world relationships is banned. So is training on sensitive conversation data.
Source: thedecoder
