Yet another Hacker News

China's Regulators Take Aim at "AI Boyfriends"

37 points andai 1 hour ago 17 comments

arionhardison 50 minutes ago | parent

Yes, Gov's require populations to have "real" offspring. Authoritarian or not, this makes sense. IMO its only a matter of time before some version of this hits the US; if it has not already.

glouwbug 48 minutes ago | parent

Zero AI child policy

CamperBob2 16 minutes ago | parent

That will only be true until it occurs to them to tax robotic productivity. This whole issue feels like a temporary one.

warkdarrior 12 minutes ago | parent

Maybe we can have the government provide token quotas as you have offspring.

Zero children = you (the parent) get zero tokens

One child = the parents get 18-years worth of tokens

Two children = the parents get 2 x 18-years worth of tokens

...

tcdent 37 minutes ago | parent

Is this "pacing the frontier"?

verdverm 27 minutes ago | parent

As a society, we do need to think about what "responsible ai" means and how we legislate for it without over regulating Ai outright

anon-3988 32 minutes ago | parent

I wonder how this would effect products like Love and Deepspace. That gacha game is HUGE.

KronisLV 30 minutes ago | parent

I kinda feel like if people have to turn to AI for companionship, it's the same as using AI for therapy - because the real thing isn't available and any number of systems have failed those people along the way.

In a sense, that might be a bit telling of the modern day society: in what world is it so difficult to make meaningful connections to people, that if a real human relationship can be like 5x more meaningful (made up numbers, but surely people will agree that a real relationship can have more depth) than whatever the AI can provide, and people still choose that over the real thing? Or maybe the average person kind of sucks, or the way relationships are treated sucks, or maybe the AI is like crack for impressionable brains, or people don't want a real relationship and just want some sycophantic whatever, I don't know.

Maybe it's a numbers game and some people will never find that for real (gender skew, demographics etc.), maybe it's a failing at those people not being properly socialized, maybe they themselves have something that society doesn't value ("Be yourself! No, not like that."), or just aren't pleasant for any number of reasons, don't have a third place to go for, don't have money to go and partake in social activities, have been brainwashed by hateful social media propaganda or any other mix of circumstances.

Feels like it's probably easier to ban AI and pretend all of the other issues don't exist, rather than addressing them.

verdverm 28 minutes ago | parent

I'd recommend checking out Sherry Turkle's work. It's not as much about availability as friction. Ai does not come with the friction IRL does, so people turn to it as an "easy mode"

I applaud the CCP for getting out in front of this one. It's way more a concern in my mind than data centers

KronisLV 24 minutes ago | parent

> She is a specialist in how technology changes us psychologically and socially. Her new book is on our relationships with chatbots —Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines. It will be published by Little, Brown and Company on September 29, 2026.

What good timing, thanks!

https://www.sherryturkle.com/the-author

verdverm 22 minutes ago | parent

I first heard her on NPR during an Ai segment where they had a pilled CEO and Sherry (separately).

"What to do when Ai says 'I love you'"

https://www.npr.org/2025/07/18/g-s1177-78041/what-to-do-when...

itake 12 minutes ago | parent

My $0.02 is when it comes to dating, social media ruined people’s “standards” [0]

People would rather chill and be single than date the wrong guy, even if they aren’t bringing much to the table themselves…

[0] - same energy as the teen girls have low self esteem due to magazine covers and instagram.

SoftTalker 9 minutes ago | parent

If people are born into a situation or simply have had bad luck with who they decided to trust, after enough betrayal you decide that juice of relationships isn't worth the squeeze. I'm pretty much there in my life, I don't seek companionship in AI (nor can I ever imagine doing so) but more than casual friendships and especially romance is not worth the work and the pain.

PowerElectronix 13 minutes ago | parent

The CCP trying to get fertility rates up by cracking down on lesbians, paying money for children and now cracking down on whatever this is.

It's no use, though. You need a good economic and social outlook to get people to even consider having children. And this ain't it.

himata4113 10 minutes ago | parent

Personally no amount of social outlook would want me want children. I simply don't want to have them I don't like raising or interacting with children it's just not in my nature and I really feel like a lot of that has to do with how people are nurtured.

fragmede 9 minutes ago | parent

Given comparison reports between people's opinions of AI and the future between China and the US, I think it is.

zinodaur 3 minutes ago | parent

I hope the rest of the world follows suit. Can you imagine the human misery venture capital could inflict by pursuing this vertical?