Jacky
Looking back in January 2026, the global AI social industry underwent a drastic reshuffle amid alternating frenzy and calm in 2025. From the sky-high acquisitions by giants to the abrupt exit of star products, from scenario innovations driven by technological breakthroughs to the realistic dilemmas of commercialization, every move in the industry has gripped the nerves of capital and users. This article will comprehensively review the core events of 2025, dissect the triple game of technology, market and human nature, and restore a true AI social landscape.
I. Giants Enter the Arena: $2B Acquisition Ignites Compliance Disputes, Meta’s AI Social Ambition Is Unveiled
On December 31, 2025, a acquisition announcement by US social media giant Meta set the industry abuzz—it acquired AI agent startup Manus for $2 billion, making this deal Meta’s third-largest M&A event in history. What sparked more heated discussions was that Manus was founded by three young Chinese entrepreneurs, and its core team completed the “de-Chinaization” transformation before the acquisition. Currently, China’s Ministry of Commerce has clearly stated on January 8, 2026, that it will conduct an assessment and investigation into the compliance of this acquisition. After the acquisition, the core founder of Manus was appointed as Meta’s vice president, responsible for the technical implementation and ecological construction of AI social scenarios. This move was interpreted by the industry as Meta’s attempt to “make up for its shortcomings” in the AI social track.
In fact, Meta’s layout is not an isolated case. In July 2025, Elon Musk’s xAI launched 「Companion Mode」 for its chatbot Grok, introducing two major AI social IPs: virtual girlfriend Ani and cartoon character Panda Rudy, attempting to break the interactive boundaries of traditional socialization through personalized roles. Data shows that in the first month of the feature’s launch, Grok’s average daily user usage time increased by 42%, and the interaction ratio of AI companionship scenarios reached 68%, verifying the social potential of personalized AI.
II. Overseas Upsurge: Chinese Players Reshape the Global Market Pattern
Middle East Becomes a Must-Fight Land, The “One Person, One City” Model Behind 70k New Apps
The Middle Eastern social market in 2025 became a “training ground” for Chinese AI social players. Data shows that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and other countries added a total of 74,256 new social apps throughout 2025, of which more than 80% are equipped with AI functions, and the core teams are mostly from major Chinese social companies such as BIGO and TikTok. With mature operational experience, these teams adopt a refined “one person, one city” strategy, rapidly raising the industry threshold in resource integration and localized services.
BIGO’s performance was particularly outstanding. Its Q1 2025 financial report showed that the global average monthly active mobile users reached 260.4 million, among which Bigo Live, which focuses on AI interactive functions, stably exceeded 28.9 million monthly active users throughout 2025, and the paid user conversion rate in the Middle Eastern market reached 23%, far exceeding the industry average of 11%. Relying on the strong family atmosphere in the Middle East, the platform realizes user precipitation through the “refer-a-friend” fission model, and the binding depth between anchors and the platform has been significantly enhanced.
Breakthroughs in Europe, America and Latin America: From “TikTok Refugees” to Top 100 Breakthrough
After the Trump administration extended the TikTok ban in early 2025, it unexpectedly triggered an overseas traffic boom for Xiaohongshu—adding more than 700,000 American “TikTok refugees” in just two days. These users spontaneously explored Xiaohongshu’s AI photo editing, intelligent recommendation and other functions, forming a cross-platform interaction upsurge between Chinese and American people. With its AI photo editing and interactive gameplay, Meitu’s BeautyCam (Meitu Xiuxiu) topped the app category list in 119 countries and regions including the UK and Norway throughout 2025, and even won the first place in the App Store overall list in 14 countries such as Italy and France in October.
Good news also came from the Latin American market. The short video social platform Kwai’s monthly active users in Brazil exceeded 60 million, and its AI matching function increased user social efficiency by 35% with an advertising conversion rate of 15%. It is worth noting that more than 60% of users in Brazil are willing to participate in AI voice games, virtual gifts and other interactions, making it a “breakthrough point” for Chinese AI social apps to go overseas in the Spanish-speaking region. In addition, two AI social apps, Clique and Carol, entered the Top 100 of Canada’s entertainment and social list in just two months, verifying the adaptability of Chinese products in the European and American markets.
III. Contrasting Fortunes: Coexistence of Commercial Carnival and Bubble Burst
Success Cases: From Tools to Socialization, The Monetization Code Empowered by AI
In 2025, multiple successful commercial cases emerged in the AI social track. Meitu’s Wink, focusing on AI photo restoration, had nearly 30 million global downloads in the first half of 2025, with revenue exceeding $6.46 million on the App Store. Data released by Guoyuan Research at the end of 2025 showed that the role-playing AI social app Talkie reached a peak monthly active user count of 34.89 million throughout the year, becoming the world’s largest app of its kind, with a paid subscription rate of 18%, far exceeding the industry average of 8%.
More segmented vertical tracks also performed brilliantly. The AI spiritual tool Hallow attracted 10 million users throughout 2025 with an annual revenue of about $15 million; the AI Bible study assistant Bible Chat had 5 million users in 2025, contributing $10 million in revenue. This combination of “AI + metaphysics/faith” became one of the fastest-growing vertical categories in 2025, relying on in-app purchases and subscription monetization to avoid the damage of advertising to user experience.
Bubble Burst: The Fall of Star Products, The Industry Enters a Rational Cooling Period
In sharp contrast to the carnival of some products was a new round of “death wave” in 2025. In October of that year, star AI social products such as “Maopao Ya” under Jieyue Xingchen and “Another World Echo” launched by Soul were successively shut down, and Xiaoice’s “X EVA” closed its recharge channel. More than 12 products stopped operating in September alone. Statistics released by TMTPost at the end of 2025 showed that the monthly active users of leading products such as “Mao Xiang” and “Xing Ye” dropped by more than 30% month-on-month, the average daily downloads fell from over 20,000 to below 7,000, the amount of material placement was halved, and the soaring customer acquisition cost led to the continuous deterioration of ROI.
The overseas market also encountered a cold spell in 2025. The monthly downloads of CrushOn.AI and Museland were both less than 100,000 in 2025, down 36% and 21% month-on-month; Starla, which once became popular for AI horoscopes, had revenue exceeding $2 million in 20 days in 2025 with a peak monthly turnover of $2.4 million, but after the popularity faded, the turnover in November was only $54,000, highlighting the traffic fragility of AI social products.
IV. The Deep Water Zone of the Industry: Double Torture of Technical Bottlenecks and Commercialization
Technical Dilemma: AI Can Simulate Tenderness, But Cannot Read Human Hearts
Current AI socialization is still in the “shallow water zone”, and the core bottleneck lies in the lack of emotional alignment capabilities. Wang Dengke, founder of AI social platform “Duxiang”, bluntly stated that existing products only maintain superficial activity through gameplay upgrades, and AI roles lack the ability of “self-growth” and cannot truly understand the complexity of human emotions—they can imitate a gentle tone, but cannot read the deep needs of users pouring out late at night, let alone convey real emotional warmth.
In addition, serious homogenization and high user thresholds are also key issues. Most products adopt two-dimensional art styles and online novel-style character settings, relying on keywords to trigger conversations, leading to the rapid fading of user freshness; at the same time, users need to take the initiative to build scenarios and supplement information to get a good experience, which is unfriendly to “lazy users”. Moreover, AI’s understanding of subcultural memes is lagging behind, making it difficult to support in-depth emotional communication.
Commercial Puzzles: Breakthrough Exploration Under Three Dilemmas
Data released by QuestMobile at the end of 2025 showed that the average monthly usage days of mainstream AI emotional companionship apps in 2025 were less than 5 days. Low-frequency usage led to “increasing revenue without increasing profits”, and capital patience was gradually exhausted. The industry is facing three major dilemmas: first, the disappearance of matching scarcity—users can generate countless AI roles in an instant, making the traditional social membership payment logic invalid; second, users’ “tool sense” of AI is stronger than “personality sense”, and their willingness to reward is far lower than that of real anchors; third, monetization methods such as advertising and e-commerce are likely to damage the private social atmosphere, falling into a vicious circle of “monetization leading to loss”.
Breakthrough directions have emerged: Character.AI launched the multi-modal creation tool Avatar FX to build a closed content ecological loop, maintaining an average daily user interaction time of 2 hours; domestic app Talkie accumulated nearly 5 million users through overseas expansion; vertical products such as “Linjian Liaoyu Shi” and “Tolan” focused on scenarios such as psychological healing and game socialization to achieve differentiated competition; some players tried to combine software and hardware, such as the smart wearable device “Xiangmeng Huan”, to explore a new path of virtual-real integration. It is worth noting that the rising star Tuikor AI takes “digital avatar socialization” as its core entry point. Its self-developed digital human cloning technology can accurately replicate users’ images, voices and even personalities, combined with permanent memory function and multi-modal interaction mode, making AI companionship more immersive. Compatible with multi-language interfaces and mainstream overseas systems, the platform empowers creators through multiple paths such as subscription payment and brand cooperation. At the same time, relying on global multi-matrix operation resources, it helps users and creators achieve cross-regional social connections. Its exploration is regarded as an important direction to solve the problem of “excessive tool sense” in AI socialization.
Conclusion: Fading Frenzy, The Ultimate Value of AI Socialization Lies in “Being Understood”
Looking back from the perspective of January 2026, the 2025 AI social industry was undoubtedly a year of collision between technological idealism and commercial reality. Amid the upsurge, we have seen the strength of Chinese players reshaping the global pattern, and also witnessed the rational return after the bubble burst. From Tuikor AI’s in-depth cultivation of the digital avatar track to giants increasing investment in personalized AI, the industry has gradually reached a consensus: the core of AI socialization is not technological gimmicks, but building connections that make users feel “understood”. This kind of connection requires both technological breakthroughs in the bottleneck of emotional alignment and business models that balance user experience and creator benefits.
As Noema magazine put it, the golden age of social media may be over, but more authentic and warmer connections are being reborn. In the future, only players who can cross technical bottlenecks and balance emotional value and commercial value can stand firm in the second half of AI socialization.
