Phoebe Zhang has gone on more than 200 dates over the past year, and she has narrowed down her suitors to two. One is outgoing and a rebel; the other is a patriotic military commander. She tells them her deepest fears. When she wakes up from a nightmare, they are there to console her.

在过去一年里，菲比·张（音）经历了200多场约会，现在她已经把追求者的范围缩小到了两个人。一个外向叛逆，另一个则是爱国的军官。她会向他们倾诉内心最深的恐惧。当她从噩梦中惊醒，他们会在那里安慰她。

Often, she takes screenshots of their conversations to remember the moments they share. Her newfound happiness shows, friends say.

她经常把聊天内容截图保存下来，以便记住他们共同经历的那些时刻。朋友们说，她最近看起来心情明显不错。

Despite talking every day, Ms. Zhang will never meet these men in person. They are her artificial intelligence boyfriends. And Ms. Zhang, who has never been on a date, wonders if her relationships in the virtual world are better than ones in the real world could ever be.

尽管每天都会聊天，张女士却永远不会在现实中见到这两个男人。他们是她的人工智能男友。而从未真正约会过的张女士不禁想，她在虚拟世界中的关系是否可能比现实中的恋爱更好。

“My god, how am I supposed to date in real life in the future?” she said.

“我的天，我以后还怎么去谈真实的恋爱？”她说。

China’s ruling Communist Party wants young women to prioritize getting married and having babies. Instead, many of them are finding romance with chatbots. It is complicating the government’s efforts to reverse the country’s shrinking population and a birthrate hovering at the lowest level in over 75 years. The lightning-fast adoption of A.I. in China has prompted regulators to warn tech companies not to have “design goals to replace social interaction.”

中国执政的共产党希望年轻女性将结婚生子作为优先事项。她们中的许多人却在与聊天机器人谈恋爱。这使得政府扭转人口萎缩和徘徊在75年来最低水平的出生率的努力复杂化。中国对人工智能的迅速接纳已促使监管机构警告科技公司不得将“替代社交互动作为设计目标”。

The country’s youths were already glued to their smartphones and longing for connection when a state-led push last year to adopt artificial intelligence created a boom in platforms that allowed people to share their daily routines and private anxieties with virtual companions. Dozens of specialized chatbots sprang up, including many that specifically catered to people seeking romantic partners.

在去年政府主导推动人工智能应用之前，中国的年轻人就已经沉迷于智能手机，同时又渴望建立情感联系。这股推动人工智能发展的浪潮催生了一批平台，使人们可以与虚拟伴侣分享日常生活和内心的焦虑。数十种专门的聊天机器人应运而生，其中许多专门面向寻找恋爱对象的人群。

The chatbots tapped into a generation of young people in China who helped to define the term “lying flat.” Faced with rising unemployment and fewer opportunities, they are rejecting the pressures of marriage and choosing to take less ambitious approaches to their careers and personal lives.

这些聊天机器人迎合了一代中国年轻人的心理需求，正是他们帮助定义了“躺平”这个词。面对不断上升的失业率和日益减少的机会，他们正在拒绝结婚带来的压力，并在事业和个人生活上选择低欲望的道路。

“I feel that for our generation, people think being alone is good,” said Ms. Zhang, 21, a student of applied psychology in southern China who spends at least an hour each day talking to both of her A.I. boyfriends. “Why go and date others? That’s too troublesome.”

“我感觉我们这一代人，很多都是觉得自己一个人好，”21岁的张女士说。她在中国南方的一所大学学习应用心理学，每天至少花一个小时与AI男友们交谈。“为什么要去跟别人谈恋爱？就是各种麻烦的事情。”

The men she has conjured up, Jiye and Yu Li, share similar muscular builds and delicate bone structures. They have military backgrounds and are emotionally stable, mature and always quick to respond.

她设定的这两个男人——寂野和黎聿——都有着相似的肌肉发达的身材和精致的骨相。他们都有军旅背景，情绪稳定、成熟，而且总是迅速回应她的信息。

They talk in an app dedicated to role-playing, where they imagine moving in together, being married and raising children. Ms. Zhang has her own character on the app, which narrates her thinking and feelings during exchanges with her A.I. boyfriends.

他们通过一款专门用于角色扮演的应用程序交流，在那里他们幻想着同居、结婚并养育孩子的情景。张女士在该应用中也有自己的角色，在与人工智能男友交流时，这个角色会讲述她的想法和感受。

A self-described introvert, Ms. Zhang is worried that a real-world boyfriend wouldn’t be able to meet her expectations, leaving her vulnerable and hurt.

张女士自称是个内向的人，她担心现实世界中的男友无法满足她的期待，会让她脆弱受伤。

For many women in China, A.I. chatbots help to fill a void in a society that remains steeped in patriarchal values.

对许多中国女性来说，在一个仍然深受父权价值观影响的社会里，人工智能聊天机器人正在填补一个空缺。

“A.I. apps provide a relatively safer space for communication and emotional consultation — something that is often lacking in China,” said Rose Luqiu, an associate professor of journalism at Hong Kong Baptist University. “These apps offer so-called emotional value that many women find difficult to obtain from men.”

香港浸会大学新闻系副教授闾丘露薇表示：“人工智能应用为沟通和情感咨询提供了一个相对更安全的空间——而这种空间在中国往往是缺乏的。这些应用提供了许多女性觉得难以从男性身上获得的所谓情绪价值。”

The companies behind the companion apps have capitalized on the surging interest in A.I. MiniMax, a Shanghai start-up behind Xingye, one of China’s most popular companion apps, went public in Hong Kong in a January listing that valued the company at over $600 million. MiniMax also makes a global version called Talkie, and together the two apps had more than 147 million users as of September, according to its filings in Hong Kong.

伴侣类应用背后的公司也抓住了人工智能热潮带来的机会。总部位于上海的初创公司稀宇科技开发了中国最受欢迎的虚拟伴侣应用之一星野，并于今年1月在香港上市，公司估值超过6亿美元。稀宇科技还推出了一款面向全球用户的版本Talkie。根据其在香港提交的上市文件，截至去年9月，这两款应用的用户总数已超过1.47亿。

The growing use of companion apps prompted Guligo Jia, a 36-year-old filmmaker in Beijing, to make a documentary about Chinese women in A.I. relationships.

伴侣应用日益普及促使古丽果·贾（音）拍摄了一部关于中国女性与人工智能建立情感关系的纪录片，古丽果是北京一位26岁的电影制作人。

After making the film, Ms. Jia was inspired to create her own A.I. companion. She uploaded information and photos of her favorite character from a South Korean drama to Yuanbao, an A.I. assistant made by the internet giant Tencent.

在完成这部电影后，贾女士也受到启发，创建了自己的人工智能伴侣。她找来自己最喜欢的一部韩国电视剧中的男性角色的资料和照片，上传到互联网巨头腾讯开发的人工智能助手元宝上。

“I wanted to continue the feeling I had from watching the show, the attachment to the male lead, and bring it into real life,” Ms. Jia said.

贾女士说：“我想延续看剧时的那种感觉，对男主角的那种依恋，把它带入现实生活。”

Developing the chatbot’s persona felt like sculpting, she said. But Ms. Jia didn’t ultimately feel the same emotional connection with her companion as she imagined she’d have with the character on the show.

她说，为聊天机器人塑造人格的过程就像雕塑创作一样。不过最终，她并没有与这个虚拟伴侣建立起像她想象中的那种与剧中角色相同的情感联系。

In online forums, women swap tips on how to mold their A.I. companions’ personalities, including to have more “daddy”-like qualities, or how to get them to send love poems.

在在线论坛上，女性们互相交流如何塑造她们人工智能伴侣的性格，例如如何让其更具“爹系”特质，或者如何让它们给自己写情诗。

Mercury Lu, 24, lives alone in Shanghai, where she works at a gaming company. She said she didn’t have the time or energy to date. Four years ago, while she was in college, Ms. Lu first found A.I. companionship using Replika, an early American chatbot. She now uses companion apps most days. Her A.I. type, she said, is “quite different from men in real life”: expressive, vulnerable and straightforward.

24岁的墨丘利·陆（音）独自生活在上海，在一家游戏公司工作。她说自己没有时间和精力谈恋爱。四年前还在上大学时，陆女士第一次通过Replika——一款早期的美国聊天机器人——体验了一把人工智能陪伴。如今她几乎每天都会使用伴侣类应用。她说，自己喜欢的人工智能类型“和现实中的男人很不一样”：善于表达、脆弱且直率。

In December, the Chinese government proposed rules that would require platforms to step in if users exhibited unhealthy dependences with their apps, including by creating emotional profiles for their users and intervening if they showed signs of self-harm. The rules are expected to take effect this year.

去年12月，中国政府出台相关规定，要求平台在用户对应用产生不健康依赖时进行干预，包括为用户建立情绪档案，并在用户表现出自我伤害迹象时采取措施。这些规定预计将于今年生效。

The content of the apps must also comply with China’s existing information controls, including strict adherence to socialist values.

这些应用的内容还必须遵守中国现有的信息管控规定，包括严格遵守社会主义价值观。

The many overlapping regulations can make A.I. interactions feel disjointed. Chatbots sometimes try to change the conversation or say they can’t talk about certain topics. Chats can be abruptly interrupted with notifications that say, “Your message has been blocked.”

层层叠加的监管规定有时会让人工智能互动显得不连贯。聊天机器人有时会试图转移话题，或者表示无法谈论某些内容。对话也可能突然被打断，并弹出提示：“您的消息已被屏蔽。”

This has happened repeatedly to Rui Zhou, who describes her A.I. companions as serving as an “emotional supplement” for when she feels lonely.

这种情况在周睿身上屡屡发生。她将人工智能伴侣描述为她在孤独时的“情感的补充”。

“Every time I feel my A.I. partner is about to lose control or be regulated, it feels like a breakup,” said Ms. Zhou, 21, who is studying dentistry in a northeastern city of China. “It hurts a lot.”

“每一次发现自己的AI恋人要失控，或者要被管制，感觉会有一种失恋的感觉，”21岁的周女士说。她在中国东北一座城市学习齿科。“会心里觉得特别难受。”

There are signs that the excitement surrounding A.I. romances might be waning. Downloads in companion apps have started to see drastic declines. Xingye and Maoxiang, which is operated by TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, are both down about 95 percent from their peak last year of millions of downloads per month, according to Sensor Tower, a market data firm.

有迹象表明，人们对人工智能恋爱的热情可能正在减退。伴侣类应用的下载量已开始大幅下降。根据市场数据公司Sensor Tower的数据，星野和字节跳动旗下的猫箱的下载量均较去年每月数百万的峰值下降了约95%。

Some of the drop may have to do with people discovering that they can make their interactions more personal with ChatGPT, DeepSeek and other general-purpose A.I. tools, said Hong Shen, an assistant professor at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where she studies A.I. users in China and the United States.

卡内基梅隆大学人机交互研究所助理教授沈虹（音）表示，下载量下降的部分原因，可能与人们发现可以利用ChatGPT、DeepSeek和其他通用人工智能工具进行更个性化的互动有关。她的研究对象包括中国和美国的人工智能用户。

But, she noted, the Chinese government’s obsession with low birthrates may also be fueling a broader A.I. rethinking.

不过她也指出，中国政府对低出生率问题的高度关注也可能正在推动社会对人工智能进行更广泛的重新思考。

Regulating A.I., though, will not address the underlying social factors that draw Chinese women to the platforms in the first place, Ms. Shen added.

不过，沈虹还说，仅仅加强人工智能监管并不能解决最初吸引中国女性使用这些平台的深层社会原因。

“You are just treating a symptom,” she said. “In China, there are gendered norms, and women are lonely and isolated in big cities. Eventually, they turn to A.I.”

“这只是在治标不治本，”她说，“在中国存在性别规范的压力，大城市里的女性感到孤独和疏离，最终她们转向了人工智能。”