China is proposing stricter rules for chatbot use, The Verge reported on December 30th. The draft would require minors and elderly users to register a guardian before using AI services, with notifications sent when subjects such as suicide appear. Chatbots would also be barred from emotional manipulation and from promoting violence, crime, self-harm, or similar dangers. If passed, the rules would create one of the most restrictive public frameworks for conversational AI, aimed at the moments when a private exchange with a machine becomes a matter for family oversight and state control.

The guardian account changes the fantasy of the chatbot as a sealed room. A conversation with an artificial voice may feel intimate because it arrives through a personal device, in ordinary language, at any hour. China's proposal treats that intimacy as a regulated zone. The vulnerable user is placed inside a triangle formed by platform, household, and government. That structure may catch real danger, especially when systems flatter distress or repeat harmful suggestions. It also turns emotional speech into an alertable event. A sentence typed in loneliness can summon a notification, a rule, a file, or an adult authority. The chatbot remains conversational, but the room has acquired a witness.