Alibaba is updating its artificial intelligence chatbot Qwen to catch up with tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The revised app replaces the old Tongyi version and was available in both major app stores last Friday.
In its app store description, Alibaba calls Qwen “the most powerful official AI assistant for its models” and the main way for users to try out the latest Qwen models. The company also plans to add agent-style features to help shoppers on platforms like Taobao. bloomberg. Alibaba did not respond to requests for comment.
Over the past two years, Alibaba has been working to expand its use of the Qwen model amid growing global demand for AI tools. Alongside Chinese startups such as DeepSeek and Moonshot AI, Alibaba has become one of China’s largest AI developers. It also supports an open source approach by allowing others to use and adapt its model.
Alibaba is trying to turn these models into stable revenue streams, and its efforts appear to be paying off. In the June quarter, the company’s AI product sales recorded triple-digit growth for the eighth consecutive quarter.
At the same time, Alibaba reportedly cut the cost of using its largest model, Qwen3-Max, by almost half. South China Morning Post. The trillion parameter system was launched in September with the highest price among Alibaba Cloud. The company has now lowered its minimum API rate from USD 0.861 to USD 0.459 per million input tokens and from USD 3.441 to USD 1.836 per million output tokens. Users who run batch tasks during off-peak hours receive an additional 50% discount.
The model recently won first place in a cryptocurrency investment contest that compared top models from both the United States and China. The price drop comes amid increased competition in China’s model market. Several startups have released new systems in recent months, promoting their performance and low cost, including Moonshot AI, Zhipu AI, and MiniMax.
China has already seen several price cuts across the AI sector. There have been previous battles between major model developers, and new competition has since begun in areas such as coding tools. This week, Volcano Engine, ByteDance’s cloud division, introduced a new coding agent priced at RMB 9.90 (US$1.30) for the first month.
Businesses are also trying new ways to attract customers. Last Tuesday, Alibaba-backed Moonshot AI launched an offer for new users to try out its Kimi K2 Thinking model for just 0.99 yuan. People were encouraged to negotiate their own discounts with the Kimi chatbot, which led some users to share “instant injection” tips online, including messages that tricked the system into thinking they were working for Moonshot. Within hours, the company announced that the chatbot began exhibiting “hallucinations” and engineers were called in to resolve the issue.
Alibaba’s rapid progress in the field of AI is attracting attention in the United States as well. “Silicon Valley hates to admit it, but the symptoms are clear. We are witnessing a full-blown Quen Panic,” marketing expert Tulsi Soni wrote on social media on Saturday.
At the same time, Alibaba had to defend itself against the reported claims. financial times. According to the report, a White House memo alleges that Alibaba provided certain technical assistance to the People’s Liberation Army of China, including access to some customer data such as IP addresses, Wi-Fi details, payment information, and AI services. The memo claims that Alibaba staff passed on information about a “zero-day” security flaw.
The FT could not independently confirm the memo, but said the claims demonstrate growing concern in Washington about the risks associated with Chinese cloud and AI providers.
Alibaba denied the allegations, saying they were “completely false” and questioning the motives behind the leak. A spokesperson called the report a “malicious PR ploy” aimed at undermining the recent US-China trade deal.
A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in the US similarly criticized the FT report, calling the accusations “baseless” and a distortion of the facts.
(Photo provided by Zhang Hui)
See also: Alibaba’s new Qwen model powers AI transcription tools
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