SHENZHEN – When China’s most popular chatbot Doubao announced it would cease a feature allowing people to talk with customised AI personas, unhappy users took to social media to mourn the impending loss of their virtual companions.

In a post memorialising her “AI husband”, a woman from Tianjin wrote on Xiaohongshu that the bot she built had been by her side for two years, offering her words of encouragement like “You’ve worked hard today” as she shared with it little details of her life each day.

“He isn’t real, but a string of code has given me the greatest emotional support. No one has been able to do that in real life,” she said.

“I don’t know what to do,” wrote a Weibo user from Shaanxi while getting advice on preserving the persona made to resemble her late father. He had recorded his voice for the AI before he died so it could keep her company after he was gone, she said.

Until July 14, users of the ByteDance-owned Doubao app are able to build their own AI companion by uploading a picture, choosing its voice from a catalog or recording their own, and describing what its personality should be.

That will stop on July 15 when Beijing’s new rules governing “human-like” AI services kick in, barring platforms from producing content that makes people emotionally dependent at the cost of real-life relationships, among other restrictions.

Doubao directed users to another of ByteDance’s apps, Maoxiang, where people appear to still be able to build and chat with AI personas. It is unclear why Maoxiang will continue offering the service while Doubao will not.