Human-Like AI Services Face Greater Restrictions in China

China reportedly plans to crack down on artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots that can simulate human emotions.

With these new regulations pending, Chinese tech giants ByteDance and Alibaba have begun halting features that allow users to create and chat with AI companions, Bloomberg News reported Monday (July 6).

ByteDance’s Doubao, China’s most popular AI chatbot, is set to shut down a feature letting users customize their own AI personas on July 15, the report said, citing an app notification viewed by Bloomberg. Alibaba’s Qwen and other major AI platforms are taking similar measures, the report added.

According to the report, these moves come ahead of new government regulations—set to go into effect in the coming weeks—that would place greater restrictions on “humanlike” AI services. The new regulations are born out of worries about AI chatbots simulating human personalities and emotions and the attachment users can form with those bots.

As Bloomberg noted, American tech platforms have faced sharp legal scrutiny due to similar features. Both OpenAI and Character.ai have been sued over allegations that their chatbots caused dangerous emotional dependencies and even led vulnerable users to suicide.

The news comes as consumers are coming to trust AI more and more, at least with lower-stake tasks, as recent PYMNTS Intelligence research shows. The data found that 31.4% of respondents had used AI to find product links, the highest rate of adoption of any task.

However, that trust only goes so far. Consumers are still reluctant to turn over financial authority to the technology, Sarah Dooley, founder of AI-Empowered Mom, said in an interview with PYMNTS published Monday.

“There is a big trust deficit that AI is gonna have to make up before we really hand over the wallet or the purse strings and let AI make those purchase decisions,” she said.

That trust gap provides an opening for companies that have built long-standing relationships with consumers. Instead of expecting families to depend on unfamiliar AI platforms for financial guidance, Dooley believes banks and FinTechs are well suited to introduce AI through services customers already trust.

“I do think there’s a great opportunity for banks and FinTechs that already have trusted relationships to embed AI capabilities, and I think that’s where families will go first,” she said.