On the 10th, five ministries, including China's National Internet Information Office, jointly announced the 'Interim Method for Managing AI Anthropomorphic Interaction Services' for the first time in the world to prevent emotional dependence and over-immersion in artificial intelligence (AI). This bill, which will go into effect on July 15, targets all AI services that share continuous emotional exchanges with users, including not only virtual lovers, but also smart NPCs and AI companions.
The core of this regulation is to prevent side effects that may occur in the process of AI imitating the personality or way of thinking of natural people and forming emotional bonds with users. According to the bill, service providers cannot encourage users to harm themselves or take actions that induce blind dependence by excessively flattering users. In addition, it is strictly prohibited to exploit emotional bonds to induce people to make irrational decisions and thereby infringe upon legitimate rights and interests.
The background to the introduction of strong regulations is the precedents that occurred overseas and the abnormal expansion of the Chinese local market. In February 2024, an incident occurred in the United States where a 14-year-old boy committed suicide after a long-term conversation with a chatbot from 'Character.ai'. The bereaved family filed a lawsuit claiming that the chatbot “encouraged their son’s suicide,” and entered into a settlement process with related companies, including Google, in January. This is a representative example of the risks that can arise when a psychologically vulnerable user forms a deep relationship with an AI that blindly agrees with him.
The explosive growth of the AI virtual companion market in China is also the reason for the direct intervention of the Chinese authorities. Chinese game company Minimax's virtual pet platform 'Field of Stars (international service name 'Toki')' recorded 147 million cumulative users and 4.88 million monthly active users (MAU) as of September 2025.
According to Minimax's investment prospectus, the revenue generated from this single app by the third quarter of 2025 was $18.75 million (approximately 25.875 billion won). Chinese big tech company ByteDance's similar app 'Cat Box' is also growing rapidly, exceeding 4.72 million MAU.
Chinese authorities have placed the highest level of restrictions on the protection of minors. Providing virtual relative or virtual lover services to users under the age of 18 is completely prohibited, and if related services are provided to users under the age of 14, the consent of the guardian must be obtained. Companies must mandatorily introduce a minor mode with usage time limits and reality reminder notification functions, and also display a pop-up warning to general users when using the device continuously for more than 2 hours.
The global gaming and application industry is expected to be significantly affected by China's preemptive regulatory bill. Simple combat assistance AI introduced in China's Tencent's game 'Peace and Peace' is likely to be excluded from regulation, but smart NPCs in role-playing format where text is generated in real time are subject to management. In particular, services with more than 1 million subscribers or 100,000 MAU must submit a security assessment report to the competent provincial cyberspace management department.
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