Alibaba sends AI ‘digital employees’ to work in rival apps from ByteDance, Tencent

The latest version of the QoderWake tool, launched by Alibaba Cloud on Tuesday, allowed users to generate fully functioning workers using a single-line description of the required role, the company said. These digital workers could then be put to work within any of China’s three major workplace communication platforms: Alibaba’s DingTalk, ByteDance’s Feishu and Tencent’s WeCom.

QoderWake’s digital workers could “operate seamlessly” within the three workplace platforms, autonomously absorbing context from shared documents, calendars and group chats, Alibaba said on Tuesday.

The move reflects how domestic tech giants are aggressively pivoting their costly AI models towards lucrative business-facing applications capable of executing complex enterprise workflows. Meanwhile, they are open to incorporating rival products at the application layer, shifting away from their traditional “walled-garden” approach.

Beyond customised roles, QoderWake also had 10 ready-to-use roles, including product manager, data analyst, user interface designer and front- and back-end developer, the company said. These roles had been fine-tuned using data from top-tier industry teams, allowing them to undertake real-world tasks without requiring additional training, it added.

Since its initial release in April, QoderWake had deployed nearly 100,000 digital employees, executing around 2 million tasks across real-world enterprise scenarios over the past three months, the company said.