Chinese users are mourning vanished AI companions, highlighting how quickly emotional AI products can disappear and why that matters for users and builders.

ByteDance and Alibaba are disabling AI companion features before new China rules take effect, signaling tighter limits on emotional chatbots.

Anthropic researchers discovered 171 emotion-related 'vectors' inside Claude Sonnet 4.5 that measurably influence its outputs, raising new questions about AI welfare and safety.