Chinese Labs' Latest Product? Roleplay

Beijing’s regulators are coming for AI boyfriends. When the Cybersecurity Administration’s regulations on “human-like interactive AI” (人工智能拟人化互动服务) took effect on July 15, China became the world’s first country to regulate anthropomorphic AI services. The rules ban providers from “manipulating” users into emotional dependence, limit minors’ access to some specific provisions, and impose reporting requirements, among other rules. In response, ByteDance and Alibaba have both pulled some anthropomorphic companion offerings from their AI products.

Whatever you think of this use case, an incredible number of people now go to AI for various emotional reasons. For users of open-source AI models worldwide, the use case that burned the most tokens last year was not writing code, but roleplay.

That’s…