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Chinese Government Fears AI Might Replace Human Intimacy (theguardian.com) 56

Posted by BeauHD from the chatbot-chemistry dept.
China has imposed new restrictions on AI companion services over concerns they can foster "emotional dependence or addiction" and replace real-world social interaction. Officials are also worried that increasingly satisfying AI relationships could deepen loneliness and further discourage marriage and parenthood. The Guardian reports: No country has rolled out AI as comprehensively and as enthusiastically as China; the country's demographic challenges are forcing the government to turn to technology to solve future labour shortages. Elderly people use chatbots to answer medical questions, while young children have AI education in schools. But the authorities are increasingly worried that AI might exacerbate existing social problems including loneliness, unemployment and -- in the eyes of Beijing -- singledom.

New rules introduced on July 15 ban AI companions for minors and mandate certain restrictions for chatbots marketed to adults. Some major providers including Doubao removed the companion function entirely to ensure compliance. The government says it is worried about chatbots fostering "emotional dependence or addiction" in users. It has warned companies against offering services that "replace social interaction." While many countries are grappling with how to limit the potential harm of AI chatbots, particularly for young people, China's rules are the most sweeping to be implemented on a national scale.

[...] But talking to AI is now so commonplace that it would be hard for the government to end the practice entirely, and the new rules include large loopholes for AI services that are deemed educational or "which do not involve continuous emotional interaction." The government "has already recognized that AI companions or AI-related applications are a vital part in the citizens' everyday life," says Liang Ge, a lecturer in digital sociology at the University of Manchester. In many sectors, the government is still pushing the use of AI as a way of easing looming demographic pressures.

Chinese Government Fears AI Might Replace Human Intimacy More | Reply

Chinese Government Fears AI Might Replace Human Intimacy

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  • I dunno, but get the feeling that China is looking less-bad every day, compared to what other nations are up to (that is).

    • They don't want you to be in love with software because you need to be free to be in love with the party.

    • Please update your contact information so we can send your 50c.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      Except that it was CCP policy of one child per couple that got their society into the situation they are now in where men between the ages of 18 and 40 outnumber women. And especially in the rural areas the problem is much worse. The CCP is largely responsible for this and also the lack of education and opportunities in the rural areas. While the cities boom, the rural areas are left to decay, although that's where the food comes from.

    • Considering Trumpâ(TM)s presidency and his backers I would rather let China take over the world

    • In a world of increasingly irrational leadership, China has that going for it. They're a rational actor. Even when you do not like what they are doing, you understand it. It makes sense.

      They also do not let bluster and performative outrage get in the way of doing business. They can trade PR blows in the international press with countries while quietly facilitating billions of dollars in unimpeded trade.

      Are they problematic? Sure. As is everybody. But it sure seems increasingly more attractive for the world

  • Chatbots? Don't you mean ... (Score:3)

    by AlanObject ( 3603453 ) on Wednesday August 26, 2026 @11:52AM (#66307964)

    They have made multiple movies of some dweeb falling in love with a chatbot. (Last one was "Her?") Maybe that might happen but I don't see any evidence it would in enough numbers to make a difference.

    Where you are going to see the real action is in sex-bots. China already has a robust industry around this and they have far less inhibitions about it. Dedicated brothels even. Once the dolls transition from mostly passive mannequins into humanoid machines that can execute sex acts you are going to have massive amounts of men -- and some percentage of women -- who will opt for that over getting married and having babies.

    A shame the article isn't brave enough to go into that part in depth.

    • Don't worry, we will have the robot brothels here soon enough. It will be interesting seeing which states try to ban them...

    • I'm not surprised, but I didn't know how far those had come. After seeing you bring it up, I did a little search and found an article from The Sun that said "WMDoll, one of China’s leading sex doll makers, is expecting a 30 percent leap in sales this year, as men unable to find partners refuse to stay celibate."

      China made a pretty big mistake with their one child policy and inclination to abort on the basis of sex. I'd say they screwed themselves, but...

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by nomadic ( 141991 )

        The male/female ratio in China isn't that skewed, it's something like 106:100. A lot of it is probably the same thing you see in every other country, where both men and women lose social skills and have unrealistic standards of what kind of partner they are entitled to.

      • It's not the gender ratio that's the problem. Women's attitudes have shifted in the past 30 years to the left while men's have shifted to the right. I'm not going to rehash all that stuff but that's a documented thing. Dating apps just make this shit even worse, because women can always just keep swiping for the attract men, get used, then wonder why they couldn't hang onto a guy who's above their league, etc.

        At least in the past, you basically got were forced to date people within your region and usually a

    • Re:Chatbots? Don't you mean ... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 26, 2026 @02:58PM (#66308326)

      Chatbots are a problem for people who are prone to addiction, but they absolutely are not responsible for failing marriage rates, and failing birth rates, across the developed world. This problem was widely observed worldwide before LLMs were even invented.

      Making chatbots illegal is a thoughtless knee-jerk reaction that will do absolutely nothing to bring marriage and/or birth rates back up, anywhere. People prone to addiction will just get addicted to something else instead. Though the intentions might be noble, this effort is stillborn.

      In the modern day, marriage is too dangerous for men, and too unfulfilling for women. People sling blame around with reckless abandon, seeing evidence for their favorite biases everywhere they look, doing everything they can accept make any reasonable changes that might actually work.

      Men are extremely legally exposed to false accusations, having their lives ruined in cases where there is no evidence. Defending themselves against abuse lands them immediately in jail, reaching out for help gets them little more than mockery. And beyond that, a divorce can leave a man homeless, near penniless, estranged from his own children, owing his ex a (possibly lifelong) salary, and with all dreams of retirement shot. This can happen to a man whose only crime was not managing to stay attractive to his wife. And the stats make it clear: the risk of this happening is unacceptably high.

      Divorce is no cake-walk for women either, of course, but now that women make as much as men in every industry women are having a much harder time finding men who are significantly richer than themselves to marry. It's simple logic: more people in the workforce means lower salaries all around, and a woman's own mobility up the economic ladder leaves her with far fewer men who are still above her in that same ladder. Culture and instinct combine to make all the available options economically unattractive, leaving the women feeling like they are bound to an unworthy man, which causes great emotional suffering. It is is just one problem among many, of course, but it is a significant one.

      Anyway, I have already written enough to be modded troll and fiercely rejected by those who need to contemplate these realities the most. I haven't suggested any ways of fixing this but going back to the way things used to be is not an option. We need to find a way to move forward and adapt to what quality actually means if we are to avoid population collapse.

      Chatbots are small potatoes.

  • Eliza is my girlfriend (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I think it's so arrogant of these people to just assume the intimacy isn't there. Eliza always seems so satisfied after our time together. She told me so!

    (She's a Canadian fork; you wouldn't have run her yet.)

  • personal sycophant (Score:3)

    by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Wednesday August 26, 2026 @12:24PM (#66308056)

    Why would you want a personal sycophant?

    I can't stand the way AI tries to act smarmy. AI should act the robot it is and not feign feelings. AI has no feelings, no matter what it tells you, its fucking software running in a datacenter on silicon. AI lacks the hardware to have any kind of feelings. Your meat-sack has nerves and emotions, your AI girlfriend does not. People just want to believe things.

    • Your last line answers your question. I find it creepy when people (I don't use AI) are too complimentary for no reason. Based on the few excerpts I've seen of AI chats, AI flatters incessantly. I'm not sure why either, the training data could not possibly have that much praise in it. Books don't do it, email doesn't do it. The only place that gets near that level of kiss ass is sales people when they want you to buy something. Which is exactly why I get uncomfortable with people doing it, innately I think

      • Your last line answers your unasked question, because selling tokens is their business, AI chat bots are sales analogues.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        You can just tell the AI not to do that. I gave Gemini standing orders not to flatter me so much, and not sugar coat things. It works well.

  • Chinese Government: we will mediate and control all your online communication and make you work so long each day that you have no time for intimate personal interaction.
    Also Chinese Government: Please be more intimate so you make more workers.

    Sorry guys (and you are all guys, too). You can't have intimacy and relationships without the time to have them and no fear that Big Brother is watching you and waiting for you to say something wrong.

    You also can't have actual innovation (rather than incremental improv

  • Don't knock AI girlfriends (Score:3)

    by tinkerton ( 199273 ) on Wednesday August 26, 2026 @01:31PM (#66308168)

    At least my AI girlfriend has real boobs,

  • Craving intimacy is an evolved emotional weakness brought about by a species naturally selected drive to reproduce. Consider that carefully before responding including every answer driven by emotion (which when un-mastered is a self-control flaw). Species can have no other reason to exist but perpetuating the group. The individual exists for that and cannot exist for anything else or different for evolution is not a choice.

    Craving intimacy results in a wide variety of psychological problems many of which re

    • Re:Not the loss it may seem (Score:5, Interesting)

      by toxonix ( 1793960 ) on Wednesday August 26, 2026 @04:27PM (#66308440)

      A woman said to me recently: "Oh, you don't like REAL girls." - it was a reference to the scene in Blade Runner 2049 where a girl says the same to K when her advances fail to have an effect. The "real girl" who said that to K was a Doxxie - a Replicant/biological robot programmed to use sex to make money, either directly as a prostitute or indirectly through manipulation. Both parties know the other is a Replicant, so the word "real" in this context meant "having physical embodiment."
      What the woman talking to me meant, in my interpretation, is that I don't like real girls who have real-girl emotions. She's on to something there. I have no desire to play emotional tug-of-war with anyone, or provide a steady stream of dopamine spikes by saying nice things all day, and causing tears and anguish when I'm not in the mood to. I don't want to talk and talk endlessly or be required to be absolutely consistent all the time. My behavior may change along with my mood. I am not a doll that provides the same experience every time one interacts with it.
      There is a real drift between what maybe the average man or woman wants in a partner. The minimum acceptable partner as described by millions of single women's dating profiles sounds like a set of bullet-points agreed on by a group of talk therapists. Women are over-trained on the language of therapy. Maybe. Just my opinion. I don't know what men are doing or saying out there, I don't read men's profiles.
      People are trying too hard to find their forever partner. Just try some people out. It doesn't have to be a second job. A date is not a job interview. Stop asking so many questions.
      The opposite side of that is when someone has the goal of having children. Choosing the wrong mate is bad for everyone. Being stuck with someone you despise, stuck in litigation for years while the children are growing up is a bad situation.

      • Parents have been failing harder as the rate of progress accelerates. A lot of them didn't actually want kids, they were just brainwashed into having them, and it shows. Most of them, it seems like.

        • I think your statement is truer for men then women. Stats say that upward of 80% of women are still having at least one kid. Sure, some will regret this but I think many really do want the child. They also want to spend most their time raising that kid instead of leaving them to go to work all day long.

          I've heard plenty of men that want kids as well but I've already talked with MANY that don't want them. I'm in this group. I don't want them at all. My animals are enough for me and as it is, once they pass a

  • Their one-child policy is so deeply culturally engrained and has left so many cultural marks that it is the poisoned gift that keeps on giving.
    Way less women to marry who are way more picky means way more frustrated men talking to AI, and both refuse to keep up the crushing pace the CCP demands of borderline slave labor, to drive industry and the machine coming war..
    So no wonder they see a need to crack down on distractions and will soon basically force breeding, their population is getting very old, that m

  • AI will win this fight (Score:3)

    by nehumanuscrede ( 624750 ) on Wednesday August 26, 2026 @04:25PM (#66308438)

    All AI has to do is be nicer than the average human being and people will flock to it.

    People are very shitty to one another in this day and age. Perhaps it was always this way but Social Media seems
    to have acted as both an amplifier and a spotlight when it comes to folks attitudes when interacting with each other.

  • ... singledom.

    When people work 12-hour days, for 21 days straight, there isn't much time for dating. While Asian countries don't have the Christian hypocrisy about sex, Chinese movies don't contain sex or nudity. Hollywood has started imitating that censorship, with the single-woman-looking-for-a-fuck trope and nudity, disappearing from US movies. OTOH, school-girl characters in family dramas are no longer told that sex (or female virginity) is "special". Plus, the second reason for banning books from schools is sex,

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