Alibaba has launched a new upgrade to its Qwen AI app, enabling it to perform real-world tasks such as ordering food delivery and booking travel within the chat interface.
The new features, now in public testing in China, integrate Alibaba’s major consumer services, including its e-commerce platform Taobao, payment system Alipay, and travel service Fliggy, into the AI. This allows users to complete transactions and tasks without switching to other apps. Alibaba stated the update represents a shift from AI models that “understand” to systems that “act”.
The company also introduced a beta ‘Task Assistant’ capable of making phone calls to restaurants, processing documents, and planning complex travel itineraries. According to Alibaba, the Qwen App has surpassed 100 million monthly active users within two months of its public beta launch.
The move marks Alibaba’s more aggressive push into consumer-facing AI, an area where it has previously lagged behind domestic rivals like ByteDance and Tencent. It follows a global trend where companies like Meta and OpenAI are also developing AI agents to handle multi-step tasks.