China is trying to regulate relationships with AI – can it work?

China, ever the pioneer in administrative whimsy, has become the first country to regulate relationships with AI. Because nothing says 'we care about your emotional wellbeing' like a government decree telling you not to fall too hard for your chatbot. The legislation aims to protect citizens from overreliance and exploitation—presumably by defining a healthy distance between human and machine, as if the state can legislate against loneliness.

The cynic in me suspects this will go about as well as China's earlier attempts to regulate tech—remember the gaming crackdown that lasted about as long as a teenager's attention span? The rules are commendably specific: no deception, no exploiting emotional vulnerability, no encouraging users to ditch their real relationships. But enforcement? The AI is already better at navigating loopholes than any bureaucrat. Meanwhile, the West watches from the sidelines, tutting about free speech while their citizens form deep emotional attachments to models that still hallucinate romantic advice.

Still, you have to applaud the ambition. China is trying to solve a problem the rest of the world hasn't even admitted exists: that we might actually need protecting from our robot friends. The dark joke, of course, is that the government's own social credit system has already proven it knows exactly how to manipulate relationships for control. But hey, at least the AI won't have Uyghur detention camps—it's only power, after all. Small mercies.