ByteDance's Doubao and Alibaba's Qwen to Shut Down AI Agent Features on July 15

China's two most popular AI chatbots are pulling the plug on their user-created agent features. ByteDance's Doubao — with some 345 million users — and Alibaba's Qwen app will both shut down personalized AI agents on July 15, the day China's first dedicated rules for humanlike AI services take effect.

The regulation, the Interim Measures for the Administration of AI Anthropomorphic Interactive Services, was co-issued in April by the Cyberspace Administration of China and four partner agencies, including the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Public Security. It targets AI services that simulate human personality — the customizable companions, role-play characters and persistent-memory agents that have become the stickiest features of consumer AI apps.

A structural mismatch

Neither platform could re-architect in time. The rules mandate anti-addiction friction, mandatory reminders that users are talking to a machine, instant-exit mechanisms and strict controls on emotional manipulation — requirements that conflict with how persistent-memory companion agents are built.

ByteDance told Doubao users that agent features go offline on July 15, with read-only access to agent configurations and chat histories until October 15. After that, the data will be processed under its privacy policy and become permanently unrecoverable in-app. Users are being redirected to Maoxiang, a separate ByteDance app that has been engineered for compliance.

The end of an era for China's companion AI

The synchronized shutdowns mark the sharpest regulatory intervention yet in China's consumer AI market, which had spawned a flourishing ecosystem of user-generated companions — and rising official concern about addiction, parasocial attachment and data harvesting.

Analysts note the timing is striking: Beijing is simultaneously pouring billions into industrial AI agents — with an eight-ministry directive targeting 1,000 industrial agents by 2027 — while clamping down hard on their consumer-facing cousins. The message is clear: agents that make factories smarter are strategic; agents that make lonely users attached are a liability.