Alibaba revamps Qwen chatbot as some see Silicon Valley ‘panic’ over firm’s AI progress

Alibaba dubs the updated app, renamed from Tongyi to Qwen, the ‘most powerful official AI assistant’ for its Qwen models

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Alibaba has been stepping up efforts to monetise Qwen-based applications. Photo: Shutterstock

Ann Caoin Shanghai

Published: 4:36pm, 16 Nov 2025Updated: 5:18pm, 16 Nov 2025

Alibaba Group Holding has begun a revamp of its artificial intelligence chatbot in a move to match OpenAI’s ChatGPT, according to app store information and media reports, as some observers see “panic” in Silicon Valley over the Chinese tech giant’s rapid AI progress.

The new chatbot app, Qwen, an upgraded and renamed version of the previous app, Tongyi, became available on Android and Apple app stores on Friday.

Alibaba dubbed the updated app the “most powerful official AI assistant for its models” and “the primary entry point for experiencing the latest and most powerful Qwen model”, in app-store descriptions. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

The company also planned to add agentic-AI features to the app to boost shopping on platforms including the main Taobao marketplace, Bloomberg reported.

Alibaba did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

The tech giant, based in Hangzhou, the capital of eastern China’s Zhejiang province, has been pushing adoption and commercialisation of the Qwen series of AI models over the past two years amid the global AI frenzy kicked off by OpenAI.

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