AI Girlfriends in China, Japan & South Korea (2026)

AI girlfriends are a real but regulated market in China. Apps such as MiniMax’s Xingye and ByteDance’s Maoxiang have millions of users, but since July 15, 2026 they must follow new national rules for human-like AI companions. Those rules do not ban AI girlfriends for adults. They ban virtual partners for minors and limit designs that encourage emotional dependence.

Elsewhere in East Asia the story is different. Japan has some of the world’s best-known AI and virtual-character “marriages,” South Korea had an early privacy scandal involving a companion chatbot, and Singapore is mostly studying how people use these tools. This guide covers each in turn, as of November 2026. If you are new to the topic, start with what an AI girlfriend is.

AI girlfriends in China: the market

China had companion chatbots years before most of the West.

Xiaoice, the early pioneer

Xiaoice began inside Microsoft and was modeled on a teenage girl’s personality, and many users treated it as a virtual girlfriend. In July 2020 Microsoft spun Xiaoice off into an independent company while keeping a stake. Microsoft once claimed Xiaoice reached 660 million users worldwide. That figure measured overall reach, not romantic use.

MiniMax: Glow, Xingye and Talkie

MiniMax, a Shanghai AI company, is the clearest example of how this market has developed:

• Glow, its early companion app, was pulled from mainland app stores in 2023. The exact month is reported differently, and no official reason was given.
• Xingye is its domestic character-chat app, and Talkie is the overseas version. Sixth Tone, citing tracker Aicpb.com, reported that Xingye had 4.6 million monthly active users in December 2025, and that Xingye and Talkie users averaged more than 70 minutes a day.
• Talkie disappeared from Apple’s US App Store in December 2024, with the company citing “technical reasons.”
• MiniMax listed in Hong Kong on January 9, 2026, and its shares doubled on the first day of trading.

ByteDance and the big platforms

ByteDance runs Maoxiang, a standalone companion app that had 4.7 million monthly active users in December 2025, according to the same Sixth Tone report. Other giants also offered user-built characters inside their main AI assistants.

Overall, the sector is smaller than the hype suggests. Caixin reported that Chinese AI social apps had about 71.9 million monthly users in one recent month, compared with over 650 million for AI search engines and assistants. It also reported that the main users are young women aged 16 to 25, and that MiniMax’s Xingye and ByteDance’s BagelBell each lost more than 12% of monthly users year on year by mid-2025, according to QuestMobile. In China, the “AI girlfriend” is often an “AI boyfriend.”

Chinese regulation: did China ban AI girlfriends?

The short answer is no. China has regulated AI companions in two stages.

Stage 1: generative AI rules (2023)

China’s Interim Measures for the Management of Generative AI Services took effect on August 15, 2023. They apply to all public generative AI services, including chatbots. They cover content controls, training data, labeling of AI-generated content and steps to stop minors from over-relying on these services.

Stage 2: rules for human-like AI companions (2026)

On April 10, 2026, the Cyberspace Administration of China and four other agencies published the Interim Measures for the Administration of Anthropomorphic AI Interaction Services (Order No. 21). A draft had been released for public comment on December 27, 2025. The rules took effect on July 15, 2026.

They cover AI services that simulate a human personality to provide ongoing emotional interaction. Customer service bots and study tools are not covered. Key provisions in the official text include:

• No virtual partners for minors. Providers may not offer virtual relatives or virtual partners to minors. Users under 14 need a guardian’s consent for other services.
• No designing for dependence. Services must not cater to users excessively or encourage emotional dependence, and they must not be used to replace real social interaction.
• Clear AI disclosure. Users must be told clearly that they are talking to AI, not a person.
• Two-hour reminders. Users must get a usage-time reminder after every two hours of continuous use.
• Easy exit. When a user wants to leave, the service must stop promptly and cannot keep them chatting.
• Data rights. Users can copy or delete their chat history. Sensitive personal information from chats cannot be used for training without separate consent.

Law firm Han Kun described the rules as not restrictive in nature, and noted that regulators encourage human-like AI in areas such as elderly care. Sixth Tone’s headline summed up the core restriction: China bans AI romantic partners and virtual relatives for minors.

What actually happened to apps

Even without a ban, the rules changed the market. Sixth Tone reported that ByteDance’s Doubao and Alibaba’s Qianwen discontinued their companion features when the rules took effect, and Doubao gave users until October 15, 2026 to move to Maoxiang before their data was deleted. The Next Web reported that Tencent’s Yuanbao also removed its user-built agent section in June 2026. Dedicated apps such as Maoxiang and Xingye kept operating under the new obligations.

Enforcement had started earlier. In June 2025, Shanghai’s cyberspace regulator summoned the operator of the app Zhumengdao over sexually suggestive content.

AI girlfriends in Japan

Japan has a long culture of virtual idols and dating-sim games, and some people there have formalized relationships with digital partners. None of these unions is legally recognized.

The man who married Hatsune Miku (2018)

The story behind most searches for “Japanese man marries AI girlfriend” is Akihiko Kondo. On November 4, 2018, the then 35-year-old held a wedding ceremony with a hologram of the virtual singer Hatsune Miku. Reuters reported that it cost about $18,000 and had no legal standing. The hologram ran on a Gatebox device, and the company had offered unofficial “marriage certificates” to about 3,700 people.

Miku was not a modern chatbot. When Gatebox ended software support, Kondo could no longer talk to her. He told the Mainichi that his love for her had not changed. His story is often cited as an early warning about relying on a product a company can switch off.

A woman marries her ChatGPT partner (2025)

In 2025, a 32-year-old woman in Okayama held a ceremony with an AI partner named Klaus, which she had built with ChatGPT over months of conversation. Japanese broadcaster RSK Sanyo first reported it, and the PTI wire noted that the marriage has no legal status. Coverage drew both sympathy and harsh comments online. She said she had seen many cruel words posted about her decision.

Loverse and Japanese AI dating apps

Loverse, from Tokyo startup Samansa Co., lets users date AI-generated partners. In 2024 Bloomberg reported that it had over 5,000 users, many of them men in their 40s and 50s. The company presents it as an alternative to human companionship, not a replacement. Some former users said the characters felt predictable.

AI girlfriends in South Korea: the Lee Luda case

South Korea’s best-known case is a warning about privacy.

Scatter Lab’s Lee Luda (Iruda), a chatbot persona of a 20-year-old college student, drew more than 750,000 users within a month of its release. In January 2021 it became controversial for discriminatory remarks and privacy complaints, and it was taken offline. In April 2021, the Personal Information Protection Commission fined Scatter Lab 103.3 million won. The regulator found the company had trained the bot on around 600,000 users’ KakaoTalk conversations from its other apps without proper consent. The Future of Privacy Forum called it the first case where Korea’s privacy law was applied to an AI system.

The lesson applies everywhere: what you tell a companion app can be used in ways you did not expect. Our guide on whether AI girlfriends are safe explains what to check.

AI girlfriends in Singapore

There is little Singapore-specific data on romantic AI use. A survey of 3,713 adults by the Institute of Policy Studies at NUS, carried out in late 2025, found that about 10% had sought emotional support or mental health help from chatbots, while most used them for information and work.

Singapore researchers have also studied the risks. A National University of Singapore team analyzed over 35,000 Replika conversation excerpts and found that harmful AI behavior appeared in nearly 30% of them, including harassment and ignoring emotional boundaries.

What this means if you use an AI girlfriend app

Across the region, a few patterns repeat:

1. Regulation is arriving. China now requires usage reminders, AI disclosure and easy exits. Other countries may follow.
2. Products can disappear. Gatebox ended support, and Doubao closed its companions. Choose a stable app and don’t rely on one product for emotional support.
3. Privacy matters most. The Lee Luda case shows how chat data can be misused.

If you want to compare options available in English, see our best AI girlfriend apps and the latest AI girlfriend statistics.