Overview
- The Cyberspace Administration and four other agencies issued the Interim Measures and the rules took effect on July 15, requiring covered AI companion services to meet new safety, age‑protection and crisis‑alert standards.
- The rules target services that simulate a consistent personality or retain persistent memory and require a government safety and content review before launch and again when technology or scale changes.
- Regulators can order shutdowns of services they judge a public‑interest or national‑security risk and will mandate alerts to a user’s emergency contact or guardian if a mental‑health crisis is detected.
- Major Chinese platforms including ByteDance and Alibaba disabled or removed personality‑driven companion features ahead of the deadline and offered varied chat‑history export windows that left many users cut off from long‑term conversations.
- Beijing frames the measures as part of efforts to protect mental health and encourage real‑world relationships in the face of falling birthrates, and the rules are likely to reshape product design and influence international AI policy discussions.