BEIJING, China: Alibaba launched a new AI chatbot service within its Quark app, marking its latest attempt to revive its consumer-facing business and compete with Chinese tech rivals ByteDance and Tencent.

The free-to-use chat assistant allows users to hold text or voice conversations and access real-time information and services, the company said.

Once known mainly as a browser, Quark has been rebranded this year as Alibaba’s flagship consumer app. It is now loaded with AI-powered tools such as search and productivity features.

While Alibaba has focused much of its artificial intelligence development on enterprise clients through its cloud division, the new service represents a renewed push to capture everyday users, a segment where the company has lagged.

Alibaba’s earlier AI app, Tongyi, launched in late 2023 as one of China’s first consumer chatbots, has struggled to gain momentum. It had 6.96 million monthly active users in September, compared with 150 million for ByteDance’s Doubao, 73.4 million for DeepSeek and 64.2 million for Tencent’s AI assistant, according to Aicpb.com.

Globally, major tech firms, including Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI, have integrated their AI models into popular consumer products such as Gemini, Copilot, and ChatGPT.

The new Quark chatbot runs on Alibaba’s latest Qwen3 models, which the company said deliver improved reasoning, understanding, and execution capabilities.

In a related move, Alibaba announced that pre-sales for its Quark AI Glasses would begin at midnight on October 24 on its Tmall e-commerce site. Priced at 4,699 yuan (US$659.69), the smart glasses will start shipping in December.

Alibaba unveiled the wearable device in July, joining tech giants such as Meta Platforms in the fast-growing market for AI-powered consumer hardware.