# China muzzles its humanoid AI agents, a disguised admission of weakness

> Since July 5, 2026, two of China's biggest tech giants, ByteDance and Alibaba, have begun disabling the custom agent features of their

- Author: Maxime Marquette
- Publisher: MadMax (https://mad-max.co)
- Section: Essay
- Published: 2026-07-06
- Canonical URL: https://mad-max.co/en/article/la-chine-muselle-ses-agents-ia-humanoides-un-aveu-de-faiblesse-deguise

## Introduction: when Beijing unplugs what it once encouraged

### A countdown that started on July 5

Since **July 5, 2026**, two of China's biggest tech giants, **ByteDance** and **Alibaba**, have begun disabling the **custom agent** features of their respective **artificial intelligence** assistants, **Doubao** and **Qwen**. This decision comes just days before a new Chinese **regulation** strictly governing **human-like AI interaction services** takes effect on **July 15, 2026**.

According to reporting from the **South China Morning Post**, confirmed by **Bloomberg**, **Doubao**, China's most popular AI app with about **345 million monthly users**, warned its users that its **custom agent** feature would stop working by that deadline, directing **users** to a separate app called **Maoxiang** to continue that kind of use.

### A last-minute compliance maneuver

This regulation, officially titled the **"Provisional Measures for the Administration of Anthropomorphic Artificial Intelligence Interaction Services,"** was jointly published in **April 2026** by the **Cyberspace Administration of China** and four other government agencies, including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Public Security.

The rushed withdrawal of these features by the two tech giants, just days before the regulatory deadline, illustrates a reality the **West** would be wrong to ignore: even China's most powerful tech companies remain, in the final analysis, at the mercy of a central political power able to rewrite the digital rules of the game overnight.

*I think this episode reveals something essential about the nature of the Chinese model: no company, however dominant in its home market, can afford to openly defy a directive from Beijing, a lesson Western tech giants would do well to reflect on before rushing to celebrate the efficiency of China's authoritarian model of innovation.*

## What the new Chinese regulation precisely bans

### Anti-addiction mechanisms now mandatory

The new **regulation** requires providers of AI services simulating a human personality to build in **anti-addiction mechanisms**, **mandatory usage notifications** after two hours of continuous interaction, and **instant exit options** letting **users** immediately end any interaction with the artificial agent.

The text explicitly bans any attempt at **emotional manipulation** aimed at pushing a user toward an unreasonable decision, as well as any form of **excessive emotional dependency** that could harm a user's real interpersonal relationships, a concern increasingly documented worldwide as companion chatbots proliferate.

### Special protection for minors and the elderly

The regulation flatly bans offering **"virtual partner"** or **"virtual parent"** services to **minors**, a provision reflecting clear government concern about the psychological impact of these emotionally immersive technologies on the country's most vulnerable young **users**.

People under **14** will need explicit consent from a legal guardian before accessing this kind of service, while elderly people will receive enhanced warnings and dedicated support, two population groups Chinese authorities clearly consider particularly exposed to the risks of these technologies.

*I have to admit, with a degree of intellectual honesty, that several provisions of this Chinese regulation address legitimate concerns the West is only beginning to take seriously, which changes nothing about the fact that Beijing's ultimate goal remains political and social control rather than users' individual well-being alone.*

## The fast, coordinated response from Chinese tech giants

### Doubao and Qwen, an almost perfect synchronization

According to **BigGo Finance**, the announcements from **ByteDance** and **Alibaba** came nearly simultaneously, a timing several tech-sector analysts interpret as a coordinated **regulatory compliance maneuver** rather than a purely commercial coincidence between two direct competitors in China's consumer **artificial intelligence** market.

**Qwen** announced it would disable its **humanoid conversational agents** and user-created agent features starting **July 10, 2026**, ahead of a complete shutdown of all agent services on **July 15**, a two-stage rollout that leaves little room for last-minute improvisation.

### Tencent had already paved the way in June

Tellingly, **Tencent**, through its **Yuanbao** app, had already withdrawn a similar feature back in **June 2026**, getting ahead of the regulation's effective date rather than waiting until the last minute as its rivals **ByteDance** and **Alibaba** did.

This early move by **Tencent** suggests the entire Chinese tech industry had, since the regulation was published in April, precise knowledge of what would become illegal or heavily restricted starting mid-July, making the delay taken by **ByteDance** and **Alibaba** before acting all the more notable.

*I find this industry-wide synchronization quite revealing: in a system where the state dictates the regulatory calendar with such precision, companies have no choice but to fall in line together, a collective obedience hard to imagine reproducing so easily in the more fragmented, litigation-prone Western tech ecosystem.*

## What this episode reveals about Chinese AI governance

### China as a pioneer in regulating affective AI

Several international experts, including the law firm **Linklaters** and the publication **China Law Translate**, note that **China** is positioning itself as the first jurisdiction in the world to adopt legislation this detailed and binding specifically for **anthropomorphic interaction services**, getting ahead of the European Union and the United States on this specific front.

This Chinese regulatory head start on a topic as sensitive as affective AI deserves to be recognized objectively, even though it fits within a broader logic of social **control** that fundamentally distinguishes the Chinese approach from any equivalent Western attempt at technology regulation.

### A control that extends well beyond user protection alone

The Chinese regulation also bans using **sensitive conversation data** to train future AI models without explicit consent, a provision that, on paper, protects **users'** privacy, but comes paired with requirements for **compliance with core socialist values** imposed on all content generated by these systems.

This dual nature of the regulation, both individually protective and ideologically restrictive, nicely illustrates the specificity of the Chinese model of technology **governance**, where citizen protection and political **control** of digital content always advance hand in hand rather than as separate goals.

*I believe the West must resist the temptation to simply copy the Chinese regulatory model just because it looks efficient: Beijing's speed of execution rests on total political control that would be both impossible and undesirable in our liberal democracies, even though some of its underlying concerns deserve serious reflection on our part.*

## The bigger stakes in the global artificial intelligence race

### China regulating while innovation keeps moving

It would be wrong to think this wave of regulation is slowing China's overall technological ambition: on the contrary, this same period saw the publication of **joint guidelines** by the Cyberspace Administration, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Industry to accelerate the development and deployment of **artificial intelligence agents** under the national **"AI Plus"** action plan.

This dual approach, restrictive on uses deemed socially risky but firmly permissive on general technological **innovation**, illustrates China's strategy of channeling rather than slowing the development of **artificial intelligence**, an important nuance Western commentators sometimes tend to overlook.

### The West must maintain a strategic edge

For the **West**, this episode is a reminder of a fundamental strategic urgency: the race for **artificial intelligence** isn't limited to computing power or model quality alone, it also includes the ability to establish coherent regulatory frameworks that protect citizens without stifling **innovation**, a balance neither Washington nor Brussels has yet perfectly found.

Facing a **China** that methodically advances on both fronts at once, regulation and **innovation**, **Western democracies** cannot afford to remain paralyzed by endless debates while Beijing patiently builds its technological and normative advantage on a global scale.

*I remain convinced that the biggest threat to the West in this technological race isn't so much China's occasional lead on this or that regulatory aspect, but our own chronic inability to coordinate effectively among Western allies against a rival that, for its part, moves as a single bloc.*

## The global precedents shedding light on China's decision

### Italy and the United States had already opened the debate

**China** isn't entirely inventing this regulatory territory: **Italy** had already banned the virtual companion app **Replika** in 2025 for non-**compliance** with European data protection rules, while several American states, including California, have passed laws requiring clear warnings when **users** interact with a chatbot rather than a real human.

What sets the Chinese approach apart, however, is the scale of the market affected: with hundreds of millions of active **users** on apps like **Doubao**, no Western jurisdiction has yet had to impose a **regulation** of this scope on such a massive user base in so little time.

*I note that the West has often been a pioneer in setting out regulatory principles, but then struggles to apply them with the same speed of execution as Beijing, a gap between intention and action that ends up costing dearly in terms of global normative influence.*

## The economic fallout for Chinese AI companies

### A significant compliance cost for the tech giants

According to analysts cited by **Reuters**, complying with these new rules will force **ByteDance** and **Alibaba** to redirect considerable engineering resources toward overhauling their user interfaces, building robust age-verification systems, and developing real-time notification mechanisms, all costs that will directly weigh on their margins in an already highly competitive sector.

This sudden regulatory burden comes just as these companies are investing massively in the race for large language models against rivals like **DeepSeek** and **Moonshot AI**, a dual financial and technological pressure that could temporarily slow their pace of **innovation** on other fronts.

*I think this financial constraint imposed on China's AI giants could paradoxically offer a window of opportunity for Western companies, provided they know how to seize it intelligently rather than simply watching Beijing's regulatory maneuver passively.*

## What this means for Chinese users day to day

### A user experience abruptly transformed

For the millions of daily **users** of **Doubao** and **Qwen**, this transition means having to relearn how to use apps around which some had built deeply ingrained habits, with some reporting on Chinese social networks like **Weibo** a sense of loss at the sudden disappearance of **custom agent** features they had grown attached to.

Chinese authorities are counting on the replacement app **Maoxiang** to absorb this demand, but nothing guarantees the migration will be friction-free, with several **users** fearing the loss of personal data or conversation histories built up over months of intensive use.

*I find it telling that even in a system as centralized as China's, authorities still have to reckon with the genuine emotional reaction of hundreds of millions of users, proof that even the strictest political control cannot entirely ignore the human factor.*

## Conclusion: a lesson in power more than a lesson in caution

### What Beijing is really demonstrating through this episode

Ultimately, this rushed withdrawal of **custom agent** features by **ByteDance** and **Alibaba** demonstrates less a newly discovered ethical caution on the part of these companies than a show of force by China's central power over its tech industry, capable of imposing major changes within weeks on products used by hundreds of millions of people.

This capacity for fast, coordinated execution, however impressive in terms of administrative efficiency, must be understood for what it really is: an exercise of political authority rather than a **governance** model to be blindly imitated by **Western democracies**, which must find their own balanced answers to these same technological challenges.

### The call for a more coherent Western response

As China imposes rules on its **artificial intelligence** industry with formidable speed, the **West** must accelerate its own smart regulatory efforts, without sacrificing the fundamental freedoms that distinguish our democratic societies from the **centralized** control model practiced in Beijing.

It is this delicate balance between protecting citizens, preserving individual freedoms, and maintaining cutting-edge technological **innovation** capacity that will ultimately determine which **governance** model for **artificial intelligence** proves most durable and most worth following in the long run by the rest of the world.

*I'll close this essay with a firm conviction: the West has nothing to gain from imitating Beijing's authoritarian speed, but everything to lose from continuing to dither while China methodically advances on every front of artificial intelligence governance.*

**By Maxime Marquette, columnist**

## Columnist's transparency note

### Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a **columnist and analyst**. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. **I claim analytical clarity**, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

### Method and sources

This text keeps the basic distinction between **verified facts and interpretive analysis**. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under **Sources**, never here.

**Primary source families** used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies.

**Secondary source families**: specialised publications, internationally recognised news media, analyses from established research institutions, reports from industry organisations.

When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under **Sources**.

### Nature of the analysis

The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a **critical, contextual synthesis** based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text.

## Sources

### Primary sources

- Business Standard — ByteDance, Alibaba pull AI companion features as China tightens rules, July 6, 2026

- BigGo Finance — Doubao and Qianwen simultaneously axe consumer AI agents ahead of China's new anthropomorphic AI rules, July 4, 2026

### Secondary sources

- China Law Translate — Provisional Measures on the Administration of Human-like Interactive Artificial Intelligence Services, April 10, 2026

- Bird & Bird — China's New Regulations on AI Anthropomorphic Interactive Services, June 17, 2026

- China AI Dispatch — The Off Switch, July 4, 2026

- Global Times — Chinese LLMs Doubao, Qwen to shut down personalized AI agents on July 15, July 5, 2026

---

Source: Maxime Marquette, MadMax. When citing, name the author and link https://mad-max.co/en/article/la-chine-muselle-ses-agents-ia-humanoides-un-aveu-de-faiblesse-deguise