Crackdown on AI Lovers Ignites Heartbreak in China—and Hopes to Get Them Back
To combat her loneliness, An Xu, a 15-year-old middle schooler in Shanghai, had recently been relying for emotional support on her text and voice conversations with an AI companion on Doubao, China’s most popular AI chatbot app. AI companions are meant to mimic humanlike conversation, emotions and interactions as realistically as possible—even more so than ordinary chatbots. And just before a new Chinese government regulation forced Doubao and other companies to stop offering such...