People visit the booth of Alibaba.com during the 136th China Import and Export Fair in Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong province, Oct 15, 2024. [Photo/Xinhua]

Tech giant develops its chatbot into real-life tools for consumer AI edge

Chinese tech heavyweight Alibaba Group is doubling down on artificial intelligence focused on both enterprises and consumers, and will integrate its e-commerce, map navigation and local services businesses into its newly launched Qwen App.

The company's Qwen App surpassed 10 million downloads within the first week of its public beta launch on Nov 17, becoming one of the fastest-growing AI applications to date and surpassing ChatGPT, Sora and DeepSeek. It has rapidly captured market attention, quickly climbing into the top three of Apple's App Store free apps chart in China.

It is Alibaba's latest consumer-facing AI application powered by its most advanced Qwen3 AI model. The move marks Alibaba's most significant step yet into the consumer AI market, aiming to transform its cutting-edge foundational AI model capabilities into real-life applications and tools.

Wu Yongming, CEO of Alibaba, said in a recent earnings call with investors that the launch of the Qwen App marks Alibaba's commitment to both AI-for-enterprises and AI-for-consumers.

"In enterprise-focused AI, our goal is to build a world-leading full-stack AI provider serving businesses across all industries. For consumers, we aim to build native AI-first applications by leveraging our best-in-class models and Alibaba's extensive ecosystem."

Positioned as a "smart personal assistant that not only chats but gets things done", the Qwen App is built to become the AI-powered gateway to daily life. It goes beyond conversational AI to deliver advanced capabilities in deep research, AI-assisted coding, AI-powered camera functions and voice calls.

The app demonstrates remarkable task execution capabilities. For instance, with a single command, it can generate a full research report and automatically produce a polished, multislide PowerPoint presentation in seconds.

Earlier this year, Alibaba announced plans to invest at least 380 billion yuan ($53.2 billion) in three core areas of its AI strategy over the next three years: infrastructure for AI and cloud computing, development of foundational models and AI-native applications, and AI integration across existing businesses.

Moving forward, the company plans to deeply integrate core lifestyle and productivity services, including digital maps, food delivery, travel booking, office tools, e-commerce, education and health guidance directly into the Qwen App.

Pan Helin, a member of the Expert Committee for Information and Communication Economy, which is part of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said Alibaba's strategic layout in AI is centered on Qwen, which is designed to rival ChatGPT in both capabilities and performance while leveraging Alibaba's strength in massive Chinese language data.

"The company will attract more users through the launch of the Qwen App and then channel them into its e-commerce platforms including Taobao and Tmall," Pan said.

The AI model, he added, can be integrated into the platforms' core search, recommendation engines and customer service system to improve shopping experience and increase sales of products.

At present, consumer-facing AI models have not entered the stage of monetization, while participants in the Taobao and Tmall ecosystem can build scenario-based applications based on Alibaba's current AI models, said Cui Lili, a professor of digital economy at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.

"A large number of accumulated data and a wide range of vertical business scenarios will undoubtedly help enhance Alibaba's AI capabilities in some industry-specific domains," she said.

Alibaba has also announced that its LLM Qwen and its newly launched AI application Qwen App are embedded in Quark's newly revamped AI browser desktop version. Launched in 2016 as a web browser incubated within Alibaba, Quark has become a leading AI-powered information services platform, with over 200 million users in China.

This deep integration brings instant, always-on AI assistance to more than 100 million Quark desktop users, marking another major step in Alibaba's consumer AI strategy and solidifying Qwen as the central intelligence engine across its consumer ecosystem.

The company aims to transform the Quark AI browser into an intelligent companion for desktop users for everyday digital life and productivity.