On Thursday, Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, unveiled a novel AI chatbot assistant service, amplifying its efforts to solidify its presence in a consumer-centric domain presently dominated by ByteDance and Tencent.
Alibaba has integrated this innovative chat assistant into its Quark app, which was originally a browser but was repurposed this year as Alibaba’s principal consumer application. This transformation has led to the integration of enhanced artificial intelligence capabilities, such as advanced search functions.
The newly introduced service, available free of charge, empowers users to interact with a chatbot interface through text or voice, offering real-time information and services, Alibaba explained in an official statement.
Historically, Alibaba’s AI ventures have been predominantly aimed at corporate clients via its cloud services division. This new endeavour represents yet another attempt by the company to captivate consumers in a market where it has found it challenging to gain a foothold with its Tongyi AI assistant app.
Despite being one of the pioneering Chinese corporations to introduce a consumer-oriented AI assistant app to the public in late 2023, Tongyi has not achieved widespread acceptance so far. In September, the app had 6.96 million monthly active users, in contrast to the market leader ByteDance’s Doubao, which boasted 150 million active users.
On the global front, AI assistants have been increasing in popularity for companies like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI, which have incorporated them into their respective Gemini, Copilot, and ChatGPT platforms.
The Quark’s AI chat assistant, driven by Alibaba’s most recent Qwen3 models, provides improved reasoning, comprehension, and task execution capabilities, Alibaba stated.
On the same day of the AI chatbot assistant service launch, Alibaba also announced that pre-sales for its Quark AI Glasses would commence at midnight on Friday on its Tmall e-commerce platform. The company also added that it would start delivering orders progressively from December, pricing the glasses at 4699 yuan (US$659.69).
Alibaba revealed its intelligent glasses in July, thereby joining the ranks of companies like Meta Platforms in the wearable AI devices market.
What is the latest innovation from Alibaba?
Alibaba recently launched an AI chatbot assistant service, which has been integrated into its Quark app.
What is the purpose of Alibaba’s AI chatbot assistant service?
The service allows users to interact with a chatbot interface via text or voice, providing real-time information and services.
What product is Alibaba releasing for pre-sales on its Tmall platform?
Alibaba announced pre-sales for its Quark AI Glasses on its Tmall e-commerce platform.
