China issues Interim Measures for AI Anthropomorphic Interactive Services

China’s Cyberspace Administration, jointly with the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security and the State Administration for Market Regulation, issued Interim Measures for AI Anthropomorphic Interactive Services, a set of rules governing companion chatbots, emotionally responsive virtual assistants and similar products. The measures were set to take effect on 15 July 2026.

The rules apply to both domestic Chinese platforms and to foreign providers reaching Chinese users through joint ventures or licensed local entities, and extend upstream to the developers of the underlying large language models supplying anthropomorphic features, who must update their products to support operators’ compliance. Substantively, providers must continuously and prominently disclose that a service is AI-driven, obtain parental or guardian consent for users under 14 and prohibit virtual intimate-relationship services for that age group entirely, and build in anti-addiction reminders once a session passes two hours along with tiered intervention protocols for users showing signs of self-harm or acute distress.

The measures placed China ahead of most jurisdictions in regulating a specific category of AI product — the companion or virtual-relationship chatbot — that had drawn less formal attention elsewhere despite growing concern about its effects on younger users. Operators were given roughly three months to reconfigure consent flows, age-verification systems, session timers and incident-response procedures before enforcement began.

The measures’ practical effect became clear when they took effect that July: rather than build the required anti-addiction and instant-exit features, ByteDance and Alibaba shut down their companion AI-agent features entirely, choosing to withdraw the product rather than comply.