China drafts digital-human rules for avatar apps
Reuters reports that China’s cyberspace regulator has proposed new rules for “digital human” services, a fast-growing class of AI avatars and virtual personas. The draft would require clear labeling of digital-human content, ban virtual intimate relationships for minors, restrict unauthorized use of personal data to create avatars, and target services that encourage addiction or evade identity checks. The move signals a tighter regulatory regime for AI-generated personas in China, especially where child safety, identity abuse, and emotional manipulation are concerned.
Big picture: this is less about banning AI avatars and more about forcing the sector to adopt disclosure, consent, and safety controls before it scales further.
- –Clear labeling becomes mandatory, which will raise compliance costs for avatar apps, companion bots, and synthetic media tools.
- –The minors restriction is especially strong: virtual intimate relationships are explicitly off-limits for users under 18.
- –Unauthorized use of personal data to build avatars is a direct hit on clone-style products and voice/face impersonation workflows.
- –The addiction and identity-verification language suggests regulators are also targeting dark patterns and systems that can be used to bypass trust checks.
- –For product teams, this is a signal that “digital human” products will be judged more like high-risk consumer services than generic generative AI.
DISCOVERED
63d ago
2026-04-07
PUBLISHED
64d ago
2026-04-07
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Confident_Salt_8108
