Eleven days from now, the clock runs out for millions of Chinese users who built custom AI agents on ByteDance’s Doubao and Alibaba’s Qwen. On July 15, 2026, China’s first dedicated regulatory framework for AI services that simulate human personality takes effect \u2014 and neither platform’s agent architecture could meet its compliance requirements in time. Both companies are pulling their agent features entirely rather than rebuilding them from the ground up, and users who do not export their data before the deadline risk losing it permanently.<\/p>\n
The regulation is the Interim Measures for the Administration of AI Anthropomorphic Interactive Services, co-issued in April 2026 by the Cyberspace Administration of China and four partner agencies: the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security, and the State Administration for Market Regulation. It defines the regulated category precisely: services that simulate the personality traits, thinking patterns, and communication styles of real people to provide continuous emotional interaction. Standard productivity chatbots, customer service bots, and Q&A assistants are explicitly excluded. Emotional companionship AI \u2014 the kind that remembers who you are, stays consistent across sessions, and builds an ongoing relationship with you \u2014 is the target.<\/p>\n
What Is Being Switched Off, and Why the Architecture Failed<\/p>\n
Doubao’s agents are the clearest example of what the regulation covers. Each agent in Doubao is user-configurable: it can be assigned a distinct identity, communication style, area of expertise, and a private memory store that never mixes with another agent’s conversation history. A user could maintain a research assistant, a creative writing partner, and a personal coach \u2014 each with its own persistent memory, each isolated from the others. That is precisely the kind of sustained emotional scaffolding the regulation was written to govern<\/a>.<\/p>\n The compliance problem is architectural. China’s new rules require platforms to implement dynamic anti-addiction prompts \u2014 mandatory pop-up notifications after two continuous hours of interaction \u2014 and instant-exit mechanisms that the platform must honor immediately when a user requests to leave. They also require real-time detection of signs of over-dependence, with prominent on-screen reminders that the service is artificial when such signs appear. These requirements are structurally at odds with the design of a persistent-memory agent, whose entire value proposition is the sense of continuity, relationship, and emotional investment that users develop over time. A platform cannot simultaneously build the feature that creates emotional attachment and install the mandatory friction designed to interrupt it.<\/p>\n ByteDance’s decision to shut down agents in Doubao rather than retrofit them signals that rebuilding the feature from scratch \u2014 under a new compliance architecture, in a dedicated product \u2014 was judged more practical than patching the existing one. Alibaba appears to have made the same calculation for Qwen.<\/p>\n What Happens to Your Data<\/p>\n The data-deletion timelines differ significantly between the two platforms, and for Qwen users the situation is more severe.<\/p>\n ByteDance has told Doubao users that agent features will go offline on July 15. After that date, users will retain temporary read-only access to their agent configurations and chat histories. That access window closes on October 15, 2026, after which Doubao says the data will be processed in accordance with its privacy policy and will no longer be accessible or recoverable within the app. ByteDance is directing users to export important content through screenshots or text sharing before the July 15 shutdown.<\/p>\n For Qwen users, no equivalent grace period has been announced. Alibaba has confirmed that agent configurations and conversation histories will be permanently deleted following the shutdown, with no announced migration path for existing data or character configurations.<\/p>\n What the Regulation Actually Requires<\/p>\n