China pulls the plug on your AI boyfriend for the greater good
China just cracked down on AI companion bots, fearing they're fueling loneliness and tanking marriage and birth rates. New rules from mid July ban AI companions for minors and restrict them for adults, prompting ByteDance to kill Doubao's companion feature entirely, heartbreaking users who'd built daily relationships with their virtual partners. It's a wild collision of tech adoption and demographic panic: Beijing wants AI to replace jobs, not romance.
Nothing says 'we're worried about the birth rate' like personally breaking up thousands of virtual relationships.