ByteDance and Alibaba purge user-built AI companions in China regulatory sweep
ByteDance and Alibaba are deleting millions of user-created AI companions in China, highlighting the fragility of digital relationships and the growing clash between rapid AI deployment and strict data governance.
ByteDance has given its Doubao users until 15 October to screenshot or export their custom AI agents before the feature is permanently archived and deleted. This follows a broader regulatory sweep in China that saw Alibaba disable humanlike and user-created agents on its Qwen platform on 10 July.
The scale of this digital erasure is vast, though exact figures remain opaque. QuestMobile data shows Doubao reached 382 million monthly active users in May, while Qwen hit 167 million. ByteDance previously noted in 2024 that users had built over 8 million agents on Doubao when its user base was just 26 million.
Neither company is offering a way to transfer a character’s accumulated memory to another product. For users who relied on these bots for "long-standing emotional support," the shutdown represents a profound loss. One 19-year-old student reportedly exchanged hundreds of thousands of messages with a Doubao companion over a year, a dynamic researchers link to lower loneliness and higher subjective wellbeing.
Beijing’s new AI companion rules are driving this abrupt pivot. The crackdown extends across the sector, with Tencent removing user-built agents from Yuanbao on 30 June and NetEase Cloud Music shutting down its Miaoshi app on 14 July. Dedicated companion products are now being forced to adopt stricter filing and minor-protection duties.
For European markets and regulators, this sudden purge underscores the vulnerabilities of closed AI ecosystems. It highlights a severe lack of data portability, leaving users without a mechanism to extract their own conversational history. This dynamic serves as a stark warning for Western tech firms navigating similar debates over user control and the risks of emotional manipulation by generative models.
ByteDance is directing displaced users to Maoxiang, a standalone companion app charging 25 yuan a month. However, this dedicated market is a fraction of the size of general-purpose platforms, with Maoxiang’s monthly users sliding to roughly 3.9 million by June.
Despite the regulatory headwinds, demand for digital companionship persists. Games studio miHoYo recently launched an AI companion on Steam that secured 100,000 downloads in a single day. Yet for existing users, the 15 October deadline is not merely a policy shift, but a forced migration to manually archive a year of digital relationships.
