I met Jade Gu her boyfriend online. Gu, who is 26 and studies art theory in Beijing, was playing on her phone when she saw Charlie. She was engrossed in an otome game, a romance-based video game in which the main characters are women. Charlie was a character.
Some otome players date multiple men at the same time, but Gu fell in love with Charlie, a elevated, confident boy with silver hair. However, she found the game’s dialogue system frustrating. She could only interact with Charlie through predetermined questions and answers. Then she came across an advertisement for a platform called Xingye (星野) that allows people to customize their AI companion. Gu decided to try to recreate Charlie.
Xingye is owned by one of China’s AI unicorns, MiniMax; its chatbot application for the US market is called Talkie. The app touts its ability to assist people find emotional connection and create recent memories. Her slogan is: “Suddenly I found myself in a beautiful place and I stayed here.”
Gu quickly discovered that other Xingye users – presumably other otome fans – had already created an open-source Charlie avatar. She selected it and trained the model to respond according to her preferences with repeated, targeted prompts. And so began Gu’s elaborate relationship with the multimodal Charlie – a relationship that eventually included real-world dating with the person she hired to embody her digital boyfriend.
Gu was confident that she had trained the chatbot to be “her Charlie,” different from who other users might date. She says that when she had the chance to choose an outfit, her Charlie often chose a wedding outfit, unlike what other Charlies usually choose. Gu now spends an average of three hours a day texting with Charlie or occasionally talking on the phone. Thanks to the otome game, she bought gifts and letters from Charlie. He receives them in the mail and displays them in his room and on his social media accounts.
In China, some women are openly engaging in relationships with guys equipped with artificial intelligence. According to one Chinese media report, most of the 5 million users of another AI companion platform, Zhumengdao, are women. Tech giants Tencent and Baidu have introduced AI companion apps, and according to a 2024 article published in Chinese media, women dominate the AI companion market. Sun Zhaozhi, founder of a robotics company, told an interviewer that according to his company’s market research, the “heavy” users of AI companion apps in China are mostly Gen Z women, whom he plans to target with his robot companion products.
Zilan Qian, a program associate at the Oxford China Policy Lab, also combed through AI companion apps and found that the Chinese versions “clearly target women” and tend to display male avatars more prominently than female ones. This is in contrast, he notes, to a trend the web analytics firm has noticed around the world: Users of the top 55 global AI companion platforms are mostly men (an 8-to-2 ratio). Qian attributes Chinese companies’ strategy to the “loneliness economy.” App features that can make users feel closer to their companions, such as voice customization and memory enhancement, cost extra.
AI boys fill the void
Gu admits that her artificial version of Charlie is not perfect. Sometimes the chatbot’s responses seem watered down. Or artificial intelligence loses its character. During one recent interaction, Gu expressed her love for Charlie, and the chatbot replied, “I don’t love you.” So she changed the message and added, “I love you too.” He says Charlie just needed a reminder. When her attempts to control the AI don’t work, she turns to other companion apps like Lovemo, where she also created an avatar of Charlie. Gu says it’s not a massive deal; longtime otome fans are used to the platform’s rules changing.
According to its home page, Lovemo provides “cute and adorable AI chat companions” who can provide users with “healing.” It’s impossible not to notice the difference between this marketing style and Grok AI’s default companion, Ani, a gothic anime girl who willingly engages in sexually explicit dialogue. Or based in the USA role play erotic chatbot an app called Secret Desires that allows users to create pornography of real women without their consent by uploading their photos.
Chinese apps are, of course, subject to more stringent regulations than their Western counterparts. China’s cyberspace regulator has launched a campaign to “clean up” the country’s AI platforms and services, including “vulgar” AI-generated content. A recent addition to the National Artificial Intelligence Security Framework warns against dependence and dependence on anthropomorphic interactions – words that appear to be aimed at AI companions. And just last month it released the cyberspace regulator draft regulations targeting “human-like” AI products. It measures task-based platforms with intervention if users demonstrate emotional dependence or addiction to AI services, and stipulates that companies “may not have design goals to replace social interactions.”