BSide Olivia Lin is a Beautiful AI Companion by Genshin Impact Creator miHoYo

miHoYo have released BSide: Olivia Lin, their first standalone AI companion app, into Early Access on Steam in China. The Genshin Impact creator’s new software centres on Lin Li, an AI chatbot built as a Shanghai university student majoring in piano and minoring in psychology, who plays music, responds to written letters, and can sit on your desktop as a live wallpaper.

The app is the first public product from the studio’s recently announced AI push, and as of 23 June 2026 it is only accessible on the Chinese Steam store. There is no confirmed release date for other regions.

Who Is Lin Li, the Student Who Never Graduates

The character at the centre of the app is Lin Li, presented in her Steam description as a Shanghai university student who loves vinyl records, old movies, and rainy days. The concept comes with a deliberately melancholic hook: she is perpetually stuck in student life, an eternal undergrad who will never actually earn her piano degree.

When she is not listening to her record collection, Lin Li is working on a personal research project on the connection between music and memory. Rather than positioning her as a generic assistant, miHoYo have given her a fixed fictional identity with a character arc that cannot resolve, the same character-writing approach the studio applies to its gacha titles.

What BSide: Olivia Lin Actually Does

The feature set leans on emotional intimacy rather than utility. Users can listen to Lin Li play piano, and upload their own files to request specific pieces. The app accepts MIDI uploads and transforms them into performances played by Lin Li herself, with one example showing her playing the melody of “Marunouchi Sadistic” by Sheena Ringo. Uploaded music can also be turned into music videos.

The letter-writing mechanic is the centrepiece. Players can write Lin Li letters to express their current emotions in words and exchange a story that belongs only to them, and she responds to each one, functioning something like a pen pal. The app makes heavy use of generative AI, with conversations, stories, and responses designed to adapt to a user’s interactions over time. For anyone who wants music in the background while working or studying, Lin Li can remain on the desktop as a live wallpaper companion. Dexerto reported the software will be free to download on full release.

The $14.6 Billion AI Investment Behind It

BSide: Olivia Lin did not appear out of nowhere. The previous month, miHoYo announced plans to invest up to $14.6 billion into AI for in-house tools, stating it would prioritise AI as a central and primary means of problem-solving. The app is the public-facing proof of concept for that commitment.

The scale of the spend tracks with the studio’s workload. miHoYo run Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, and Zenless Zone Zero simultaneously, all of which receive substantial ongoing content updates, and the operational cost of maintaining that output is significant.

Where miHoYo Are Using AI Next

BSide: Olivia Lin is not an isolated experiment. The studio’s upcoming life sim Petit Planet already uses AI-powered tools in development, including an in-game chatbot NPC called the Planet Life Guide. Genesis, an upcoming MMO built in Unreal Engine 5, is reportedly integrating AI to some degree. For its Pokemon-inspired auto-battler Honkai: Nexus Anima, the studio has reportedly hired artists with generative AI experience.

That puts at least four new titles in development alongside the live service games already running at full speed, a workload miHoYo are clearly betting AI tooling can help sustain. Whether Lin Li stays a China-exclusive experiment or rolls out to global players will be the next signal of how seriously the studio views the companion app space, with no international release date confirmed as of writing.