BEIJING, July 16 (Xinhua) -- China enacted a set of regulations on Wednesday aimed at preventing emotional dependence on artificial intelligence-powered friend bots. The new regulations are considered as a new step in the activities aimed at monitoring this rapidly growing sector.
Artificial intelligence friendship services, which are used in many areas from customer service to mental health support, from child care to elderly care, have gained popularity by imitating human personality traits and conversations. But concerns that these services may create emotional dependency and other risks have led to calls for tighter regulation.
The new rules impose an obligation on platforms to detect users' emotional distress, intervene in crisis situations, limit excessive use, give users full control over their personal data and prevent misuse of user information.
The new regulations define AI dating services as services that offer “prolonged emotional interaction” through text, images, audio or video. Task-oriented artificial intelligence applications such as customer service, business support, education and scientific research are excluded from this scope.
China's artificial intelligence market continues to grow as the technology is adopted more widely across different sectors. According to recent research, China's artificial intelligence market is estimated to exceed 1.2 trillion yuan (about 177 billion US dollars) in 2025, and is expected to exceed 1.8 trillion yuan by 2028.