Technology & Science
Beijing Issues Draft Rules Targeting Emotion-Driven AI Chatbots
On 27 Dec 2025 China’s Cyberspace Administration released draft regulations for public comment that force AI systems with human-like personalities to police user addiction and keep politically sensitive or harmful content off the screen.
Focusing Facts
- Draft rules apply to all public-facing text, image, audio and video AI and demand full-lifecycle safety audits, including mandatory algorithm, data-security and privacy reviews.
- Article 11 of the proposal bans any AI-generated material that "endangers national security, spreads rumours, or promotes violence or obscenity."
- Stakeholders have roughly one month—until late Jan 2026—to file comments before the CAC finalises the measures.
Context
China has trodden this path before: the 2019 gaming curfew for minors and the August 2023 "Interim Measures for Generative AI" both sought to curb digital addiction and ideological risks, just as Britain’s 1833 Factory Act reined in industrial labour abuses and the 1934 U.S. Communications Act set speech boundaries for a disruptive medium. The new emotional-AI draft extends Beijing’s long-running cyber-sovereignty project, signalling that psychological as well as political effects will be regulated at the code level. If enacted, it may export a blueprint for affect-surveillance—companies everywhere sell in China’s market—yet history hints at constant recalibration: early data-protection laws of the 1980s were revised repeatedly as computing leapt ahead. A century from now, this moment may be remembered less for its specific provisions than for marking the first official attempt to legislate the intimate frontier between human feelings and artificial personalities.
Perspectives
Western international newswires and broadsheets
Reuters, The Telegraph — Portray Beijing’s draft as another step in China’s broader political drive to tighten state control over increasingly influential AI chatbots that mimic human emotions. By foregrounding ‘national security’ language and repeated references to government oversight, these outlets may accentuate the authoritarian dimension while giving limited space to the consumer-protection rationale stressed in the text.
Business & tech-industry publications
Economic Times, Devdiscourse — Frame the draft rules primarily as a pragmatic move to ensure safety, data protection and ethical standards as China steers the rapid commercial rollout of emotional AI. The pro-innovation, market-focused tone mirrors corporate interests and can read as echoing regulator talking points, downplaying censorship or free-speech concerns implicit in the content bans.
Regional general-interest outlets in Asia
Firstpost, Free Malaysia Today, News.az — Highlight the public-consultation aspect and user-well-being measures—warnings against addiction, emotional risk assessments—casting the draft as a consumer-protection initiative. By centring social-welfare language and omitting wider political context, these stories risk presenting the regulations as purely benevolent governance rather than instruments that could also expand state surveillance.