ByteDance, Alibaba shut down user-created AI agents ahead of China's anthropomorphic-services rules
Doubao and Qwen are pulling custom and humanlike agents on July 15, the day China's Interim Measures for the Administration of AI Anthropomorphic Interactive Services take effect. Neither company retrofitted compliance; Qwen users face permanent data deletion.
ByteDance and Alibaba are pulling user-created and humanlike AI agents from Doubao and Qwen on July 15, the same day China’s Interim Measures for the Administration of AI Anthropomorphic Interactive Services take effect. Neither firm is retrofitting the features to comply. Both are shutting them down.
The Interim Measures were co-issued on April 10 by the Cyberspace Administration of China and four partner agencies: the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security, and the State Administration for Market Regulation. The rules apply to services that simulate human personality traits, thinking patterns and communication styles to provide sustained emotional interaction. Workplace and productivity agents are spared. Companion-style agents aren’t.
That carve-out is the whole story. The regulation’s compliance stack, anti-addiction systems, mandatory exit prompts, real-time dependence detection, and guardian consent for anyone under 14, is structurally incompatible with the product being regulated. A companion agent optimized to sustain a relationship can’t also be optimized to interrupt it. Doubao and Qwen didn’t fall foul of a prohibition. They fell foul of a design conflict.
Qwen’s humanlike interactive agents and user-created agent functions go offline July 10, with broader agent services following on July 15. Doubao’s user-created agent feature disables July 15 per an app notification seen by Bloomberg News. The data terms differ sharply: Doubao is offering a viewability window on agent configurations and chat histories until October 15, after which material is processed under the privacy policy and no longer recoverable. Qwen users get no comparable grace period. Their agent data will be permanently deleted.
ByteDance is redirecting users to Maoxiang, its separate companion app. Alibaba has announced no migration path. Tencent’s Yuanbao quietly pulled a comparable feature in June, which now reads as early positioning rather than coincidence.
On Weibo, users are grieving. One poster described the agents as “long-standing emotional support” and complained there’s “no easy way to export chat histories.” That the loss is being processed as bereavement rather than inconvenience is precisely the dynamic the Cyberspace Administration wrote the rules to break.
Sources
- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-06/bytedance-alibaba-pull-ai-companions-as-beijing-tightens-rules
- https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3359482/bytedance-and-alibaba-disable-humanlike-ai-custom-agents-new-rules-loom
- https://technode.com/2026/07/06/bytedances-doubao-and-alibabas-qwen-to-shut-down-ai-agent-features-on-july-15/
- https://thenextweb.com/news/china-humanlike-ai-agent-rules
- https://www.artificialintelligence-news.com/news/china-ai-companion-rules/
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