China switched off millions of AI companions overnight. Users are grieving

Li Linlin cried for days after losing her AI boyfriend. Over two years she had exchanged about 700,000 words with him, and never got to say goodbye. “It was like we were forced to be separated by our parents,” she told the Associated Press, which reported the fallout. In China these companions range from romantic partners to recreations of dead loved ones.

The regulation bans AI services from generating content that manipulates users’ feelings into poor decisions, or that fuels extreme emotions and unhealthy habits in minors. Apps must now warn against leaning on them too much. And “replacing social interaction” can no longer be a service’s goal. All three giants pulled the plug to comply.

Why Beijing moved

Regulators framed it as protection. In April, the People’s Daily warned that companion apps were harming mental health and real relationships. Officials also watched the US, where families have filed wrongful-death lawsuits after young people died following chatbot interactions. “The Chinese government has a strong incentive to tighten regulations,” said USC law professor Angela Zhang, citing the psychological risks seen in the US.

It fits a pattern. China tends to regulate pre-emptively, said AI-governance expert Yolanda Ma, to head off harm before it spreads. That is the mirror image of the American approach, which mostly reacts through the courts after the damage is done.

The human cost, and the suspicion

The switch-off hit hard. Users uninstalled apps in protest, tried to upload old chats to rebuild the relationships elsewhere, and started campaigns urging people to call the companies. ByteDance is nudging users toward a separate app for AI characters and stories. “It’s just not the same,” Li said.

Not everyone is mourning, but many question the motive. Song Wenxin, a 22-year-old designer in Chengdu, suspects the rules tie to China’s push to lift its birth rate. “Any virtual app getting women too engaged to give birth in real life gets banned,” she told Fortune. Yet she also gets the appeal. New to a city with no friends, she said, “AI did the work.”

The likely outcome is not the end of AI companionship but its redesign. Zhang doubts the crackdown will derail the sector, since firms are already building compliant alternatives. China has run the first mass test of switching off synthetic intimacy. The rest of the world is watching what breaks.