Author(s): Chew Loong Nian – AI ENGINEER

Originally published on Towards AI.

A Law Aimed at AI Girlfriends Just Wiped 8 Million Agents From China's Biggest AI App

At midnight Beijing time today, ByteDance’s Doubao — roughly 350 million monthly active users, the second most-used AI app on Earth behind ChatGPT — switched off its user-built agent feature. More than 8 million custom agents, per ByteDance’s last public disclosure, went read-only. Users have until October 15 to screenshot or export their conversations. After that, the data is gone for good.

The article explains how China’s Interim Measures for the Management of Anthropomorphic AI Interaction Services took effect on July 15 and triggered major platform rollbacks: Tencent and Alibaba had already removed user-created agent/bot features, and Doubao followed—despite the law claiming to exempt productivity agents. The author argues the real issue is that regulators (and platforms) can’t reliably classify which user-built agents will cross into “sustained emotional interaction,” so platforms choose “compliance by amputation,” deleting the entire user-built agent layer rather than auditing millions of behaviors. It details what the law requires for in-scope services (ongoing “you’re talking to a machine” labeling, periodic break reminders, one-click exit, crisis/intervention handling that breaks persona, and extra protections for minors plus safety filings), then contrasts this with how companion agents are designed to maximize attachment through persistent identity/memory—making them inherently conflict-prone. The piece extends beyond China, noting similar regulatory trends in California and the EU, and concludes with practical engineering takeaways: compliance can be built as middleware (exit checks before the model, crisis voice that overrides persona, exportable memory), and product strategy should expect persistent “feeling”/companionship features to face tighter scrutiny while more functional agent categories remain easier to justify.

Read the full blog for free on Medium.

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Published via Towards AI