Alibaba’s Amap ranking feature is latest salvo against Meituan in China’s e-commerce wars

Alibaba Group Holding on Wednesday launched an artificial intelligence-powered ranking feature on its online mapping service Amap, as the tech giant doubles down on AI applications and deepens its rivalry with food delivery leader Meituan.

Amap Street Stars, a ranking featured on the app’s homepage, used AI algorithms to rank offline destinations including restaurants, hotels and tourist attractions, to “advance Amap’s role as the gateway for lifestyle services”, Alibaba said at the launch event on Wednesday. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

The service will initially cover over 300 cities and make recommendations for 1.6 million local businesses, with the algorithm synthesising data sources that include navigation patterns and user reviews.

“Authenticity is the ranking’s core principle,” Guo Ning, chief executive of Amap, said at the launch event held at Alibaba’s headquarters in Hangzhou. “It is based entirely on the real behaviour and high credit ratings of a large number of users.”

The new service represents the latest competitive move between Alibaba, the US$300 billion-market cap e-commerce giant created by Jack Ma, and Meituan, the delivery service giant with an $80 billion market cap founded by Wang Xing, to woo consumers through innovative services. The new Alibaba feature is seen as a direct competitor to Meituan’s Dianping restaurant rating app.

In response, Beijing-based Meituan on Wednesday said it would apply AI models to screen consumer reviews of restaurants and merchants and launch a “quality food delivery” service on the Dianping app.