this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2026
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Technology

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[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 52 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

It's definitely not healthy, but this isn't going to fix the birth rate.

[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 11 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Correlation <> causation meme

[–] partofthevoice@lemmy.zip 3 points 13 hours ago

This probably won’t fix anything, but hopefully stops it from contributing to the issue further down the line

…meme

[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl 4 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

There's a lot of problems with this, and declining birth rates of the most invasive species on Earth isn't one of them.

[–] faintwhenfree@lemmus.org 5 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Bro think about Chinese economy please. Economy needs to survive bro..... Let go of your imaginery girl bro..... Treating your actual girlfriend like human is not mandatory bro...... Do it for patriotism bro....

[–] Zozano@aussie.zone 1 points 5 hours ago

Can't the AI companies charge more while using the GPU heat to warm the in vitro babies they're growing in vats?

I'm pretty sure these babies will get lots of love from their AI parents.

[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 54 points 20 hours ago (11 children)

Make babies! It's illegal to be lonely!

[–] OwOarchist@pawb.social 14 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

And wasn't China very recently concerned about their birthrate being too high? One Child Policy?

Now they're already concerned about their birth rate being too low?

[–] PonyOfWar@pawb.social 37 points 20 hours ago

The one-child policy was abolished in 2015, but birth rates have continued to decline after that. They currently have one of the world's lowest fertility rates.

[–] DeLancre@piefed.social 5 points 19 hours ago (2 children)
[–] morto@piefed.social 5 points 13 hours ago

6% of income? Still much cheaper than a kid!

[–] Trev625@sopuli.xyz 13 points 19 hours ago

It says that it was proposed... We propose a lot of bills that never pass here in the US. I'm not sure how China's laws are setup but Wikipedia doesn't say that it was ever implemented.

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[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 27 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

It’s clearly not a healthy thing to exist.

It is the worst of para social relationships, amped up by 100x. And is only going to get more exploitative.

But just on a level of building up the skills to have a relationship, it’s training kids to expect someone who always says yes, always affirms them, will never challenge them to grow…

Relationships are hard. You have to learn to love people and how to do that, and you have to learn to not be selfish, which is the opposite of what LLMs tend to encourage.

[–] newtraditionalists@beehaw.org 8 points 15 hours ago

Most importantly, you have to love imperfect people. And confront that you are imperfect as well. And thats ok!

[–] p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 18 hours ago

You know what else fixes the birth rate? Making life less shitty and giving people enough money to be able to raise children.

In the meantime, negative birth rate is just self-correction of asshole dictatorships. Can't make money line go up if birth line go down.

[–] Elting@piefed.social 38 points 21 hours ago (1 children)
[–] themurphy@lemmy.ml 29 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

AI girl/boyfriends are fucking addictions latching onto people vulnerbilities.

This ban is nothing but good, but no one thing will fix child birth rates, nor the reason for the addiction in the first place, I'll agree with that.

[–] Elting@piefed.social 15 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

It is funny to me that china can pretend not to be a capitalist nation while displaying every symptom of capitalism.

[–] themurphy@lemmy.ml 3 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

You can argue that you have capitalism if transactions are happening. Which means the word kind of looses it's meaning because it's so broad.

But people will often define it on how much market control the state displays.

You can then argue that China has market control on key aspects of important sectors. Which they do, but still with an approach, that they have private companies with government subsidies.

But most of all, the need for distance to the world capitalism is more a marketing thing. Unless they believe that capitalism is just a tool to achieve socialism, which also can be true.

[–] Elting@piefed.social 7 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

I would argue a capitalist nation is any one that allows the conversion of natural resources into private (not personal) property by law, and facilitates the exploitation of those resources through a market.

[–] Kwakigra@beehaw.org 4 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

I think a lot of world problems would be solved if these things were encouraged instead. If someone needs their romantic partner to be a mindless sycophant, I would rather them have that with a machine than try to abuse a human person into serving them as would be more traditional. More children being born in situations other than exploitation and manipulation could only be a good thing.

[–] isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 13 hours ago

You need to think of human beings as less binary good and binary evil.

[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone 3 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

This is the same logic used for child sex dolls and other material consumed by paedophiles

[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl 4 points 11 hours ago

Yeah, sure.

And I wouldn't be so pissed at Epstein and Trump and the rest of the pedophile class if they were just trafficking sex dolls.

[–] Teknikal@anarchist.nexus 13 points 20 hours ago

I kind of think everywhere probably should, that's probably the strangest thing it's like falling in love with a microwave.

[–] artifex@piefed.social 11 points 19 hours ago (1 children)
[–] albbi@piefed.ca 12 points 19 hours ago
[–] ordnance_qf_17_pounder@reddthat.com 10 points 20 hours ago (2 children)
[–] terranoid@lemmy.cafe 8 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

this will just spin up a blackmarket waifu market

[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

At least if more people ended up doing this on their own hardware with open source software, it would cut off a lot of the opportunities it presents for companies to abuse people's privacy and manipulate them.

[–] kibiz0r@midwest.social 3 points 17 hours ago

Yup. At this point, the only sensible model is harm reduction. I’m not happy about where we are, but we do need to be realistic about it.

[–] SuiXi3D@fedia.io 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)
[–] themurphy@lemmy.ml 3 points 20 hours ago

"over addiction"

You just chose to read the headline and thought the main reason was child birth. Which is a very concerning fact for alot of societies.

[–] sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 6 points 21 hours ago (2 children)
[–] ModernRisk@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

I'm a bit confused as to why this is related to 1984. I understand banning AI “boyfriends” and “girlfriends” could be seen as a form of censorship, though. But I also think it’s kind of a good thing; some people genuinely believed these AI were their real relationships and might avoid any real relationships.

[–] sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 3 points 20 hours ago

It was in jest

[–] Draegur@lemmy.zip 3 points 20 hours ago

It is a sarcastic observation of the shallow and reductive take that "nineteen eighty four is when the government does something i don't like!".

I find it less likely that anyone who uses lemmy would sincerely think it is actually good that people become parasocially addicted to a hallucination box that has been finely tuned to lie to them as convincingly as possible.

However, I admit this inference is doing a lot of gravy lifting; this is, after all, why Poe's Law exists. There are so very many excessively dim, narrow-minded, and ignorant people who WOULD indeed unironically cry "1984!!" whenever any government does anything that such a person being right here, right now, is always a statistically significant possibility that cannot be dismissed out of hand without risk.

I am giving the person to whom you are replying a generous benefit of a doubt, to be fair...

username checks out

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