China's AI companion law takes effect and Doubao deletes its custom agents
China's Interim Measures for the Administration of AI Anthropomorphic Interactive Services took effect on July 15, 2026, requiring any AI that simulates human personality to ship anti-addiction systems, mandatory usage-time notifications, instant-exit mechanisms and real-time detection of emotional over-dependence. ByteDance's Doubao, China's biggest AI app with 345 million monthly users, deleted its custom AI agents entirely rather than retrofit them, and Alibaba's Qwen did the same. Doubao users' agent data stays read-only until October 15, then is deleted forever.
