# A Law Aimed at AI Girlfriends Just Wiped 8 Million Agents From China's Biggest AI App > Source: > Published: 2026-07-15 03:02:48+00:00 Member-only story # A Law Aimed at AI Girlfriends Just Wiped 8 Million Agents From China's Biggest AI App At midnight Beijing time today, ByteDance’s Doubao — roughly 350 million monthly active users, the second most-used AI app on Earth behind ChatGPT — switched off its user-built agent feature. More than 8 million custom agents, per ByteDance’s last public disclosure, went read-only. Users have until October 15 to screenshot or export their conversations. After that, the data is gone for good. Doubao is the third domino in fifteen days. Tencent shut down Yuanbao’s user-built agent section on June 30. Alibaba’s Qwen app pulled its user-created bots on July 10. Today, July 15, is not a coincidence: it’s the day China’s *Interim Measures for the Management of Anthropomorphic AI Interaction Services* takes effect. Here’s the part that should make every agent developer sit up. The law targets AI companions — virtual partners, emotional confidants, the “AI girlfriend” category. It explicitly *exempts* productivity agents. And yet all three platforms deleted **everything** users had built, productivity agents included. That gap between what the law says and what the platforms did is the real story. And if you ship a companion-shaped agent in California or the EU, a version of this law already applies to you.