On Monday, Chinese gaming firm miHoYo launched Early Access for its AI companion app, BSide: Olivia Lin, on Steam. Unlike the studio’s anime-style games, the new release is listed as a Free to Play Utility rather than a game, marking miHoYo’s latest effort to expand beyond interactive entertainment and into AI-powered digital companionship.

At the heart of the app is Olivia Lin, a virtual character designed as a Shanghai student majoring in piano with a minor in psychology. According to her official profile, she enjoys vinyl records, classic films, and rainy days, and is devoted to exploring the relationship between music and memories.

Olivia’s debut wasn’t an overnight launch. The character began appearing on Bilibili in August 2025, where piano performance videos featuring realistic motion capture, synchronized lip movements, and a grounded visual style gradually built an audience. Earlier this March, the account expanded into letter-reading and reply videos that laid the groundwork for the app’s interactive experience months before its release.

Rather than functioning as a traditional game, BSide: Olivia Lin combines AI interaction, music creation, and desktop customization into a lightweight companion app centered on music and emotional engagement.

Users can watch Olivia perform a range of piano pieces, while musicians can upload their own MIDI files and use AI to generate animated performance videos based on their compositions.

The app also features a letter-based AI chat system where users can share their thoughts, journal daily experiences, or express their emotions through text. Olivia responds in character, delivering personalized replies based on her personality and backstory.

She can be set as a live Windows desktop wallpaper, which allows users to trigger piano performances and other lightweight interactions without opening the main application.

Negative feedback from players has largely centered on several areas. Many users downloaded BSide: Olivia Lin expecting a new title from miHoYo, only to find that it is a utility application rather than a game, with no main storyline or gameplay mechanics, leading to a noticeable gap between expectations and the actual experience.

Players have also said the Early Access build feels unfinished, citing formulaic AI letter replies and bugs that can cause audio and video to fall out of sync when generating videos from certain MIDI files. Other complaints include the requirement to link a miHoYo Pass account before logging in, which some users say makes the onboarding process unnecessarily cumbersome.

Some have also questioned whether the app’s relatively limited content makes it feel more like a platform for collecting conversational data to train AI models than a fully realized standalone AI companion product.

System requirements are relatively modest. According to the Steam listing, the app requires a 64-bit version of Windows 10 (version 1809 or later), 4GB of RAM, a quad-core processor, and Intel HD Graphics 4000 or newer.

The base installation occupies around 6GB of storage, while the complete music library requires roughly 100GB. During the Early Access period, users must link a miHoYo Pass account and can optionally connect it to Steam. All core features are currently available free of charge.

miHoYo says the project remains under active development, with Early Access primarily intended to gather player feedback before expanding features and refining the overall experience.

The current version remains relatively limited in terms of features, and whether it can establish a foothold in the increasingly crowded AI companion market will likely depend on its ability to identify a differentiated value proposition through future iterations. Currently, the app had surpassed 100,000 free downloads on Steam.