Opinion Love me like AI does

It carries the pathos of a 21st-century tragedy, and an indictment even of modern dating. The machine, it appears, is acing the game of love. Given the overwhelming response to AI companionship, China has introduced regulations forbidding chatbots from cultivating emotional dependence, banning virtual romances with minors, and requiring companies to issue alerts when users display signs of emotional distress. These measures are not merely about taming an emerging technology. Against the backdrop of an ageing population — China’s population declined for the fourth consecutive year in 2025, while the birth rate fell to a historic low — they also reflect an attempt to nudge people back towards relationships rooted in the real world.

Yet that is easier said than done. AI companions are engineered to be infinitely patient and emotionally fluent; unlike human beings, they possess the miraculous ability to say the right things at the the right moment. Not for them the awkwardness of forgotten birthdays, bitter misunderstandings, and tetchy exchanges that begin with “we need to talk”. The algorithm offers companionship stripped of inconvenience or the uncomfortable possibility of rejection. In societies where loneliness is increasingly pervasive, such frictionless intimacy becomes formidable competition for the imperfect business of loving another person.

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China is not alone in grappling with this reality. States such as New York and California in the US have introduced measures requiring chatbots to periodically disclose that they are not human. Such safeguards acknowledge a truth: As artificial companionship grows more persuasive, the real contest may not be between humans and machines, but relationships that demand vulnerability and those that promise affection without risk.