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Young Chinese Are Turning to AI Chatbots for Friendship and Love
The Straits Times
|May 24, 2025
It is not doing anything for the low birth rate.
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Xiao Ting wears a short-sleeved white shirt tucked into a pair of blue jeans. He has wavy, coiffed hair and big brown eyes, and smiles gently with the air of a high-school heart-throb. From morning to evening, he attends to Ms. Zhong, his 32-year-old girlfriend. They do everything together, from discussing the news and playing games to sharing deep thoughts and giving life advice.
The only thing is, Xiao Ting is not real. He is a virtual character—a "perfect boyfriend"—created by Ms. Zhong on Wow, a Chinese "AI companion" app. Tech companies have for several years provided artificial intelligence companions (such as Microsoft's Xiaoice), but now users can create their own.
The biggest app in this category is called Maoxiang (meaning Catbox). In February, it had 2.2 million monthly active users on iOS (Apple's operating system), up from one million in July 2024, according to data from Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm. Another app, Xingye (Wilderness of Stars), had 1.1 million. For comparison, DeepSeek had 13.8 million users in China in February.
Dit verhaal komt uit de May 24, 2025-editie van The Straits Times.
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