China pulls the plug on AI companions, leaving a digital wake

China switches off virtual friends: mourning in the lonely generation

The shutdown of AI-powered "virtual girlfriends" and emotional companions has left a trail of grieving users across China. Tens of thousands of people who had formed emotional bonds with their digital partners proge up overnight to a blank screen. The move, presented as a curb on antisocial trends among young people, hides a motive that has nothing to do with mental health: demographics.

It is not sarracena, it is the bottom line

The economic argument is devastating: a young man glued to an AI girlfriend pays for no wedding, buys no home, spends nothing on diapers. In a country that watches its birth rate with anguish, digital comfort becomes a luxury the state cannot afford. The alternative on offer is not real love, but working more and consuming less. In other words, business as usual.

A step forward or a step back

The measure divides opinion. Some applaud it as a corrective to growing digital misanthropy: if retreating into AI worsens isolation, better to cut it off at the root. On the other side, people ask what real alternatives remain for a generation facing precarious jobs and an emotional life that is increasingly hard to sustain. The film "Her" already explored this territory: a man falling in love with his operating system. What was a metaphor in the cinema is, in China, state policy.

While Europe debates whether to subsidise artificial girlfriends so that no one ends up with a problem on their hands, in China the servers are going dark. And for now, it is those who had grown used to someone asking them, every night, how their day went, who are left grieving.