China's AI companion rules take effect, forcing Doubao and Qwen to disable user-created agents

ByteDance's Doubao and Alibaba's Qwen shut down user-generated AI agent features on July 15 as China's Interim Measures for the Administration of Anthropomorphic AI Interaction Services enter force. Users have until October 15 to export chat histories before the data becomes unrecoverable.

ByteDance’s Doubao and Alibaba’s Qwen switched off their user-created AI agent features on July 15, the day China’s Interim Measures for the Administration of Anthropomorphic AI Interaction Services entered into force. The two platforms, including what Bloomberg calls China’s most popular AI chatbot, are now closed to new agent creation, and every existing user-built companion has stopped functioning.

The shutdowns weren’t a surprise so much as a compliance clock running out. Doubao notified users on the night of Friday, July 4, citing “product function adjustments.” Qwen followed the next morning, then acted in two stages: its “humanlike interactive agents and user-created agent functions” went dark on July 10, with the broader “Qwen agent functions and services” taken offline on the 15th. Tencent’s Yuanbao had already pulled a comparable feature in June, which makes this a second wave rather than an opening move.

The regulation is narrow by design. Per TheNextWeb, it targets chatbots simulating sustained emotional interaction while leaving workplace and productivity agents largely untouched. Beijing is drawing a line between the companion economy and the enterprise stack, and only one side is being disciplined.

That distinction matters commercially. Gartner projects up to 40 percent of enterprise applications will include task-specific agents by 2026, and China’s enterprise AI agent market is expected to surpass 48 billion yuan, roughly $7.07 billion. The productivity layer is where the money is. The parasocial layer is where the regulatory risk is.

Liu Dingding, a veteran internet observer quoted in Global Times, framed the retreats as reflecting both compliance pressure and an exit from “businesses with limited commercial viability.” Convenient framing, but not wrong: the platforms are shedding a product line they were never going to defend.

Users see it differently. Weibo posts have complained that agents functioned as long-standing emotional support and that there’s no easy way to export chat histories. Platforms have given a transition window through October 15, after which the data will “no longer be viewable or recoverable inside the app.” Three months to say goodbye to a confidant, then the servers forget.

The pattern echoes Beijing’s 2021 gaming crackdown: a category defined as socially corrosive, quietly euthanized while the industrially useful cousin keeps growing.

China's AI companion rules take effect, forcing Doubao and Qwen to disable user-created agents

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