China's open-source AI model launches consumer chatbot to claim mass market

HANGZHOU, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- The AI division of China's tech giant Alibaba said it has unveiled an upgraded generative chatbot, Qwen, aimed at accelerating its adoption among consumers.

Built on the company's wildly popular open-source model, which has been downloaded more than 600 million times worldwide, the new chatbot is positioned as a conversational, task-oriented personal AI assistant, the company said Monday.

It came after Alibaba's February pledge to pour more than 380 billion yuan (about 53 billion U.S. dollars) in building cloud and AI hardware infrastructure over the next three years, capitalizing on the rapid growth of the AI industry.

Alongside China's DeepSeek, Alibaba's recently launched flagship Qwen3-Max has ranked among the top-tier globally on international benchmarks. In a recent six-model global investment showdown, Qwen claimed first place, with DeepSeek taking second.

Nearly a year after DeepSeek's dazzling debut last December, China's generative AI firms, such as Kimi, Zhipu.AI and MiniMax, are racing with unabated fervor with their open-source models, creating a global open ecosystem for the disruptive technology.

Alibaba said that it is rolling out a consumer-facing product because AI is moving beyond the "learn-from-humans" phase into the era of "assist-humans." The company's roadmap envisions integrating Qwen into everyday life, including maps, food delivery, travel, office tools, shopping and healthcare.