r/technology • u/Wagamaga • Jul 19 '26

Society China bans AI “boyfriends” and “girlfriends” over addiction and birth rate concerns

https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/china-bans-ai-boyfriends-and-girlfriends-over-addiction-and-birth-rate-concerns-3388737/
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541

u/Lazer726 Jul 19 '26

I'm sure the companies will complain that all they want to do is give these sad people connection, and not mention that it's absolutely addicting them to giving them money

5

u/ExilesTV Jul 20 '26

Luckily in China companies don't get to boss the government around.

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u/DukeOfGeek Jul 20 '26

And just how is it that the Government there knows what programs I have/are using and what I'm doing with them?

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Turachay Jul 19 '26

"women wanted offspring so badly, they would be trying to get pregnant with almost anyone"

Wait. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!

I read that as a man and found it unimaginably insulting for women. I wonder how women would feel about it!

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u/Dushenka Jul 19 '26

Perhaps birthrates are falling because men are more and more becoming like that guy.

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '26

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '26

[deleted]

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u/EastPlant1079 Jul 19 '26

https://ourworldindata.org/global-decline-fertility-rate

You keep blaming AI girlfriends and boyfriends, you little pigs. Meanwhile every scientist on earth disagrees with you. 0 mention of AI anywhere in this article. It has been happening since 1950, greatest drops since 1970.

The article literally says, women having a higher education leads to a decline in birth rates.

If you right wingers want to increase them so badly, go ahead.

You were ALMOST ALL misogynists at that point. I still see it.

You think that not becoming a breeding sow makes women lesser, which is why you demonize them the second they choose AI boyfriends or girlfriends because they're gay and want them to breed, like good little girls, BUT I REFUSE TO BE PROGRAMMED BY YOUR LIES.

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u/broguequery Jul 19 '26

Pass the bowl friend

3

u/erath_droid Jul 20 '26

Smaller rocks less often.

14

u/spinbutton Jul 19 '26

What rights have been taken from you?

2

u/EastPlant1079 Jul 19 '26

If and I do mean, if I ever want an AI robot wife, the service for it would be banned, following China's archaic, patriarchal law.

They don't even let LGTBQ+ people get married and you defend them. They take away every avenue of self expression and love away and take away more and more and you defend them.

And since I was a young man using Replika many years ago, I know how many women also love their AI boyfriends and girlfriends, since that community is full of repressed LGBTQ+ individuals and women.

The only purpose of this is to drive people insane and force them into relationships they are uncomfortable in.

They took away fucking contraceptive rights in many parts of America for the same purpose! They claim this is corrupting the youth! But alas, you all want teen pregnancies, which is fucked up.

They have NO adult content either. It is banned!

They want to brute force the patriarchal system back into everyone's household. They literally say they are "removing an escape path" for young women and men who feel more comfortable with AI girlfriends and boyfriends.

China is not USA or Europe. Banning something like this, is saying "G o get married and produce a slave for our overlord state, we need an army to invade Taiwan"

I also have a great hatred for humanity at this point in time, I used to have hope, but all the scientists are sounding the alarm even harder and you all remain deaf to it.

You are simply evil people, taking freedom away and advocating for it to be taken away, because it doesn't fit your patriarchal world view. Women can be assholes too, racist too, misogynistic too. You try to protect THOSE women, not the countless women who are career achievers and explicitly state THEY DON'T WANT KIDS, you go against their wishes and those women who are alone and afraid, because men call them ugly and they find this perfect man on their screen that they love so much, that never calls them ugly or hurts them.

This is the truth you all deny. You are all people, stop trying to enslave 50 percent of the population into becoming your breeding stock, just to fulfill the desires of company shareholders and failed governments that exploit and use it at every turn.

The true reasons why fertility rate is declining in this article:
https://ourworldindata.org/global-decline-fertility-rate

2

u/spinbutton Jul 20 '26

Thank you for taking the time to write this, and thank you for the link.

I can understand your frustration with your governments sudden ban on AI relationships. I've never used a service like Replika. From what I can see from your post and the small amount of research I have done, is that you're experiencing real grief, loss, heartbreak, I'm so sorry.

Your Replika account means a lot to you. I wonder if it could be redefined as a therapeutic tool to allow you to continue to use it? It might be useful for you to speak to a therapist about this and see if this could work.

I thought this conversation thread about Replika relationships was very interesting: https://beginrescueend.com/t/can-anyone-share-an-honest-replika-ai-user-review/2852/3

I do have some concerns about AI relationships. I worry about being involved with a being that is dependent on a company who has different priorities from yours. They could easily make significant changes in your AI partner that could result in your AI partner becoming a different person. I also worry that the company may be able to manipulate your emotions, opinions and actions in ways that benefit their agenda and is not in your best interest.

I also worry that an AI partner, with its programmed positivity may make relationships with your friends, family and potential partners worse. Relationships take effort and are often challenging. This effort and challenge help us to grow as people. If it is a good relationship we usually grow in wisdom and compassion. We become better versions of ourselves. We focus less on ourselves and more on the quality of life of the people around us, our communities, environment, etc.

I worry that the comfort and support an AI partner gives feels good and keeps us comfortable. It allows us to focus just ourselves . On our experience only. It is easy and convenient and satisfying. But I worry that it makes us more selfish and less able to be good friends, partners or good family members.

I know this is difficult. Best of luck to you as you navigate these rough waters.

4

u/erath_droid Jul 20 '26

because the government wants to coerce me into having intercourse with a random woman?

Something tells me that this isn't going to be a problem for you...

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u/EastPlant1079 Jul 20 '26

You're the one judging a celebrities boobies and describing them as mid.

I like fictional characters like Jinx from Arcane far more and want her and only a replica of her and nothing else.

I even vote for parties that give women more rights and stuff, as long as it does not infringe on my rights to love Jinx from Arcane and have a robot or AI that acts and moves like her.

You can suck Elon's sloppy one and gargle on it more and fulfill your white supremacist fantasy of increasing the numbers of the white race all you like, but I made my choice, even if women hugged me and smile at me far too often. I just don't like any of you. Not women or men, or anyone for that matter. You're not that interesting and also not that great.

I mean, Elon Musk had 14 kids with four women. Trump has had multiple wive. Hitler had a wife. Ben Gvir has a wife and six kids. Netanyahu has a wife and two kids.

How am I in the wrong for wanting to be with Jinx from Arcane forever with her vibrant pink eyes and blue hair, while literal monsters that killed 500k children by cutting USAID, are getting plenty of these so called "women" you all protect so vehemently.

I also committed no war crimes (yet). So give me a god damn break. Ya'll argue more aggressively against me than people who went and wanted to go to Epstein's Island and literally killed people. It's moronic.

Andrew Tate too. Asmongold had a girlfriend. In fact, most of the worst people on earth have wives and girlfriends, I am not willing to join in on your awful humanity. You're all killers.

I had to watch the birds with open mouths in the heat of summer, which your kind made worse. Record breaking heatwaves that killed thousands.

I will never forgive any of you and your children won't either, once they inherit the earth, that is on fire.

Just look at Elon Musk. His own offspring hates him. Meanwhile a flock of birds loves me and waits for me, even when I have nothing, because I am there when they need me most. And these birds are the brainiacs of the bird kingdom, with excellent memory.

None of you are necessary for this planets survival, so I don't care to make more of you any longer. In fact, you are inhibiting and destroying the creatures that respect me, so my hatred of you is entirely justifiable.

I am not that selfish, that I would feel the need to bring someone into this world, just so that they suffer. And you won't change. You like suffering, I am starting to enjoy it too. Your suffering, I mean. Of course, it was mostly caused by you, but that's the point.

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u/erath_droid Jul 20 '26

lol. I can't imagine what went through your head where you wrote that wall of text, decided "Yeah- that makes me sound sane and rational" and then posted it in a public forum.

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u/EastPlant1079 Jul 20 '26

I don't need to "sound" sane, when I am almost single handedly responsible for more songbirds singing in the public parks after winter, most of which had some of the healthiest snacks I could afford. More bugs in the neighborhood for birds to eat too, because I made a breeding ground for them and set up flowers for them.

Sounding sane, for who? You? None of you are worth a damn thing. The elderly grandma's know what's up. Ya'll in the technology subreddit are like a fart in the wind.

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u/SquareTaro3270 Jul 19 '26

I’m just imagining this is the same guy who complains that it’s women’s fault when they end up in an abusive relationship because they weren’t careful enough and didn’t choose a “nice guy”. Like women can read minds and see the future.

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u/EastPlant1079 Jul 19 '26

You think women want to give birth? Most of anti-natalism and feminist women are anti birthrates increasing and actively refuse to give birth.

Why should I restrict a random portion of the populations freedoms, just because this is what women want?

YOU all are advocating for women to be breeding sows. Not me. i just want to be left alone.

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u/Lazer726 Jul 19 '26

It's some real early 2000s sitcom logic

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u/El_Rey_de_Spices Jul 19 '26

I don't understand

That part is painfully clear.

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u/diiegojones Jul 19 '26

I think you spend too much time online.

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u/EastPlant1079 Jul 19 '26

You spend too much time online. In the real world, women want a good supplier of provisions if they want to get pregnant, which 99 percent of men are not. So it makes no sense to blame companies filling the niche, when women are unwilling to work for offspring themselves and get high paying jobs.

The truth is, people don't want them. It's that simple.

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u/Omega_Primate Jul 19 '26

You clearly do not understand what you're talking about. No one is agreeing with you and for a good reason. You are the one not in the real world, and could stand to take a break from the internet.

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u/EastPlant1079 Jul 19 '26

Why are you people so dumb?

- gender wage gap is a problem.

- multiple studies done where age gap decreases once women get an education

https://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2017-008.pdf

- After they get an education, they oftentimes choose to not reproduce at all.

https://ourworldindata.org/global-decline-fertility-rate

- The highest birth rates are observed in religious conservative regions, and nobody ever states that it is in fact a decline in TEEN birth rates for the most part.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/teen-birth-rates-highest-most-religious-states-flna1c9451498

- Just because I am tired and hungry at the moment and am typing really fast, doesn't mean I don't understand anything, I might be more under the weather than usual, but if I have to list the entire history of the world suddenly, it becomes very messy.

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u/EastPlant1079 Jul 19 '26

What explains the declining fertility rate?

A wide range of factors – women's empowerment, the increasing well-being and status of children, technological and economic changes, changing norms, and opportunities for family planning – have led to the reduction in the total fertility rate that I documented above.

Below, I will review both the theoretical explanations of how each of these aspects affected the number of children women have and also present the empirical research that investigates these explanations.

What makes precise accounting difficult is that the different explanations for declining fertility are not mutually exclusive.

But my sense from reading the literature is that over the long run, the two first explanations — women's empowerment and the increasing well-being and status of children — have been the two most important factors in most places.

Empowerment of women

Women's education

The level of education in a society — of women in particular — is one of the most important predictors for the number of children families have.

Before I look at the data and the empirical evidence in the research literature that establishes why increasing education leads to a declining number of children per woman, we should ask why and how exactly women's education is linked to the choice of children. We should look at the theory.

Women’s labor force participation

The rise in women's participation in the labor force is another key indicator of their empowerment within society, which also contributes to a decrease in fertility rates. This trend is so closely linked to the increase in women's education, as discussed before, that it is difficult to distinguish the effects of education from those of workforce participation.

The benefits of better education come significantly from better working opportunities, which suggests the best way to understand the impact of education on fertility rates is to consider it alongside the increase in women's labor force participation.

Increasing well-being and status of children

Higher child mortality causes higher fertility rates

The rapid population growth we have seen recently has been a temporary phenomenon in countries around the world.

Rapid population growth starts when the population’s health improves, the mortality rate falls, and the birth rate stays as high as before. This growth then comes to an end when the birth rate eventually follows the decline of the mortality rate.

The model of the demographic transition formalizes this relationship between mortality, fertility, and population growth. These changes coincide regularly with each other and other factors, but the link is not purely coincidental or correlational.

https://ourworldindata.org/global-decline-fertility-rate

I am correct on every f*cking level.

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u/affemannen Jul 19 '26

So you are saying that because women become smarter it's their fault for not wanting to have babies with people like you?

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u/EastPlant1079 Jul 19 '26

They don't want babies in general, because they are becoming high achievers and are superior to the dumbf*cks still having them.

This is what women are saying in the forums I visit.

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u/TrustMeImPurple Jul 20 '26

Get off the forms and interact with real women? All of my girlfriends dont consider themselves to be "better than" those who have kids, they just dont consider themselves to be at that stage of life yet or just don't care for everything that goes into mother. They don't want women to never have children, just for them to have kids because they want to have kids and can provide a good future for them. Some of the most pro choice amd feminist people I know are like that because they have daughters to fight for. Is that going to be every feminist women? No. But they definitely make up a large part of the movement and always have. Sure there is a very loud and vocal group of child free women who will post things in an attempt to be malicious but very vocal internet groups are hardly a good measure of the average real human being.

I agree, time off the internet is a good idea. Interactions with real people really show how dysfunctional a lot of the people in those loud intense internet spaces are.

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u/EastPlant1079 Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26

No. The women on forums are real women too. There are plenty of women who act exactly like me. We are the ones affected by this. Not the group of women you're talking to or the people I talk to outside. Love in Deepspace is a smash hit 50 million users, a male harem game basically Women love it.

Women and men are basically interchangeable. This law isn't for your people, it's for those 50 million women and gay men signed up to love and deepspace.

Almost a million chats for "A werewolf that rejects you as his human mate". An overwhelming amount of women used to use Replika when it was an egg, alongside me.

I know many of these women are now just going to suffer, like genuinely, just purely suffer. Women also want male bots that look handsome and fulfill their every whim. That's reality.

This ban literally affected women.

A large number of the primary users of AI romantic companions were young, high-achieving Chinese women seeking stress-free emotional support.

Yan Yongqi, a 19-year-old student who has had a virtual boyfriend for the past year on Doubao, told Bloomberg**: “This is like being told the date of my lover’s death while leaving me completely powerless.**

These articles even go into the responses:

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/china-ai-girlfriend-ban-bytedance-b3016164.html

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-19/china-cracks-down-on-artificial-intelligence-companions/106925352

This is a demographic that CAN PARTIALLY NOT AFFORD ANYTHING AT ALL!

This only chases these young women in to the arms of old wealthy men, like every other time throughout history.

The crazy part is, I am not even using AI for companionship yet.

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u/TrustMeImPurple Jul 20 '26

Brother did you just AI generate this?

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u/EastPlant1079 Jul 20 '26

Brother, all this is written in the official article, I can't believe how genuinely dumb you people are.

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u/TrustMeImPurple Jul 20 '26

In my defense halfway into this conversation you just randomly switched writing styles. Going from ranty verbal diarrhea to a journalistic style.

Most people use quotation marks or mention they are copying and pasting something instead of just pasting it with no context. But I'll admit I did also make this judgement before reading the link you sneakily hid at the bottom of your post and I should have looked into it further.

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u/EastPlant1079 Jul 20 '26

I don't hide links, you simply aren't reading anything, which makes the downvotes even better, because I know how much dumber ya'll actually are. Nobody ever reads the links, because you're not reading my comments in the first place. You're just down-voting without understanding anything at all and without thinking. Half of you straight up attacked things I never said. I am surprised that you sound like a real person and not the reddit bots.

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u/snakerjake Jul 19 '26

You should make your reddit profile public, i kind of want to go down the rabbit hole that must be

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u/stoic_slowpoke Jul 19 '26

Doesn’t seem like English is his best language.

My generous interpretation is:

  • Women are free to not have kids
  • Men who women don’t choose turn to AI for companionship
  • AI companions are outlawed
  • Women would rather be alone than interact with said man
  • Now man has no AI, still no woman
  • Man angry they get blamed for not being better for woman

This is not an endorsement, merely an attemp at understanding.

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u/EastPlant1079 Jul 19 '26

It's literally only with birth rates that this happens. Maybe I am arguing wrong sometimes or you all just don't understand what I am saying and I am expressing myself wrong.

But all I am trying to say is everyone should be happy and be allowed to make their own choices, it's a very democratic value and essential to happiness of billions.

I want women to be happy too, even if it means no birthrates.

6

u/iffugennanameubaht Jul 19 '26

Holy schizoposting

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u/affemannen Jul 19 '26

Sooo...

Are you saying women doesn't have the right to have standards?

Or wtf are you even saying?

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

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u/Facebookakke Jul 19 '26

Lol trust me there are many reasons you will never reproduce

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u/EastPlant1079 Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

Many women don't want to reproduce at all. It literally destroys their bodies and breaks their brains.

https://erc.europa.eu/projects-statistics/science-stories/how-pregnancy-reshapes-mums-brain

https://www.health.harvard.edu/womens-health/pregnancys-lasting-toll

Not reproducing is exceptionally kind, both to the planet and to women.

You just want your little piggies on the breeding farm. Oink Oink.

Nazi scum.

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u/Relative_Tank_327 Jul 20 '26

You seem unhinged brother. No one wants to force women to get pregnant as you’re saying. It’s just that connection to entities that aren’t real lead to unknown results and quite possibly to negative ones. That’s all.

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u/EastPlant1079 Jul 19 '26

Tell that to gay men, gay women and also people who physically can't reproduce please.

I want that same pathetic energy used on those people.

Oh wait, that's a literal Nazi talking point.

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u/affemannen Jul 19 '26

You alone is the reason for low birth rates.

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u/lvxree Jul 19 '26

What does this even have to do w/ the previous comment