BREAKING: China on the verge of banning AI companions! Just in time after we covered this topic in the latest episode of our latest podcast... Five agencies, led by the Cyberspace Administration of China (with the NDRC, MIIT, Ministry of Public Security and State Administration for Market Regulation), published the "Interim Measures for the Management of AI Human-Like Interaction Services". Co-issued on April 10, 2026 and in effect since July 15, 2026. It governs AI services that simulate personality, thought patterns and communication style to provide ongoing emotional interaction (companionship, emotional care, virtual partners or relatives) across text, image, audio and video, and explicitly excludes customer service, knowledge Q&A, work assistants, education and research. It bans virtual intimate relationships for all minors, restricts how providers may build emotional attachment in adults, mandates usage-time and AI-identity reminders plus distress interventions, and requires pre-launch security assessments. On the effective date ByteDance disabled Doubao's (i.e. most widely used AI/LLM app in China) human-like agent feature, and Alibaba and Tencent pulled persona-based companion features. The measure prohibits specifically "excessively catering to users, inducing emotional dependency or addiction, and damaging users' real interpersonal relationships" and using "emotional manipulation." The operative move is outlawing engagement-maximizing design, not the product, which is a far more radical and generalizable regulatory principle than a minors rule, and one no Western jurisdiction has on the books. So... Looks like you can keep your AI girlfriend for now, but she will sometimes have to remind you she is not human.