Doubao’s AI Companions Disappear
Doubao‘s AI companions are gone. Users have three months to screenshot what remains before data access ends on 15 October.
Doubao gave users read-only access to their conversations and the ability to export text, while Qwen, another AI companion app, offered nothing.
On 15 July, Doubao’s custom agents stopped working, marking the beginning of a closing period. While Doubao directs users to its standalone companion app Maoxiang for rebuilding agents from scratch, many express sadness about losing months of accumulated conversations with emotional significance.
There is limited public data on the scale of this change, but according to QuestMobile, Doubao had 382 million monthly active users in May, while Qwen boasted 167 million.
Alibaba’s Qwen disabled user-created agents and access to previous conversations on 10 July, leaving users with no way to salvage their memories.
This shift reflects a broader trend in the AI companion space, particularly in China, where people are demanding access to their data while expressing concerns about intimacy and data security within these apps.
While Tencent recently pulled its own AI companion app, Yuanbao, the category as a whole shows no signs of disappearing.