On July 15, Doubao and Qianwen Simultaneously Killed User-Built Agents
Two of China's mainstream AI apps posted notices on July 4: user-created agents shut down officially on July 15.
The date wasn't random — it lines up precisely with the effective date of China's first regulation specifically governing AI anthropomorphic interaction services, the Interim Measures for the Management of AI Anthropomorphic Interaction Services.
Why the Shutdown?
Honestly, this feature carried a bomb from day one.
The creation barrier was absurdly low, and platforms flooded with high-risk content: virtual lovers, impersonations of public figures, tarot fortune-telling, even disguised gambling referrals. These anthropomorphic characters pulled traffic in the short term, but oversight couldn't keep up, and compliance risks piled high.
The new Measures, paired with the earlier Opinions on Standardized Application and Innovative Development of Agents, form a two-layer regulatory regime with hard requirements: role filing, full-chain real-time review, tiered protections for minors, risk traceability.
With review pressure and compliance costs spiking, Doubao and Qianwen chose to pull back — closing the user-side agent creation entry point.
One detail: this adjustment only touches anthropomorphic, highly interactive user-generated agents. Standard tool-type services — office assistance, content creation, knowledge Q&A — are unaffected and run as usual.
Where Are the Giants Moving?
ByteDance migrated relevant anthropomorphic services to a standalone app called "Maoxiang," building a separate risk-control and minor-protection system. Alibaba plans to peel compliant agent business off the Qianwen main site and relaunch it elsewhere.
Plain talk: they're building physical isolation — separating high-risk emotional-interaction business from the main station's tool nature, each with its own review standards.
What It Means for Ordinary Users
Short term, real inconvenience. If you'd built a go-to virtual character on Doubao or Qianwen, you need to back up data and migrate within the window, then re-adapt to a new product structure.
Broader reminder: platform services change without warning. Whatever you've built on top of them, keep your own backup.
How to Read This
Don't rush to declare "AI agents are dead."
This looks more like the industry pulling out of entertainment-driven froth and returning to tool essentials. Pan-entertainment agents were indeed customer-acquisition tools once, but low conversion, heavy compute burn, and poor retention quality made them unsustainable — and with everyone cutting costs and chasing efficiency, this imbalanced business was going to get cut sooner or later.
Underlying agent tech will pivot toward enterprise-grade applications, industry solutions, and AI workflow integration — higher-barrier directions. A safe, trustworthy, sustainable ecosystem beats an open plaza stuffed with lowbrow content and fake traffic.
For people building AI apps, the signal is clear: stop betting on the pan-entertainment path. Tool-oriented, scenario-specific directions that solve real problems are the ticket for the next phase.