Alibaba has launched a new artificial intelligence-based chat assistant, allowing users to interact with it through both text and voice commands. With this innovation, people will be able to easily access various services and information through a simple chat window.
The new AI assistant operates on Alibaba’s latest Qwen3 models, which the company says excel in logical reasoning, comprehension, and task execution. Most notably, the service is being offered free of charge to all users.
Until now, most of Alibaba’s AI efforts have been aimed at corporate clients. Although the company introduced “Tongyi”, its first consumer-oriented AI assistant app, in 2023, it has not yet built a large user base. While “Tongyi” had about 6.96 million monthly active users as of September, competitors like Doubao led the consumer AI market with 150 million, followed by DeepSeek with 73.4 million, and Tencent with 64.2 million active users.
In addition to these software developments, Alibaba also announced the start of pre-orders for its Quark AI Glasses, to be sold via its e-commerce platform Tmall. Shipments will begin in December, with a retail price of 4,699 yuan (approximately USD 659). With these initiatives, Alibaba aims to strengthen its position not only in software and cloud infrastructure but also in consumer hardware and AI-driven services.
