BEIJING OUTLAWS AI COMPANIONS — BYTEDANCE AND ALIBABA SHUT DOWN THEIR MOST POPULAR CHATBOT FEATURES AHEAD OF NEW LAW China’s first regulatory framework for AI services that simulate human personality took effect July 15, and the two largest AI platforms in the country, ByteDance’s Doubao and Alibaba’s Qwen, announced they would shut down their AI companion and personalized agent features ahead of the deadline. Doubao, which has 345 million monthly active users and is the most-used AI application in China, told users that agent features would go offline on July 15, with read-only access to past conversations surviving only until October 15, after which the data would be permanently deleted. The Interim Measures for the Administration of AI Anthropomorphic Interactive Services, co-issued by five Chinese government agencies in April, draws a precise line between AI that does your work and AI that pretends to care about you. Productivity agents, including customer service bots, document tools, and research assistants, are exempt. What the law targets is the second kind: AI systems that form emotional bonds, simulate ongoing relationships, and model human personality over time. The distinction reveals what Beijing actually fears. It is not that AI will become too smart. It is that AI will become too intimate, that the social bonds citizens form with machines will erode the bonds the state counts on citizens to form with their government and communities. China is the first major government to regulate AI companionship as its own category. It will not be the last. Keywords: China AI regulation, ByteDance Doubao shutdown, AI companion law, AI anthropomorphic services