Alibaba Pushes Deeper Into Consumer AI With Quark

Alibaba BABA is doubling down on consumer AI. The company has folded its new Qwen3-powered chatbot into the Quark app once just a browser, now evolving into Alibaba's main consumer-facing AI hub. It's a fresh attempt to regain ground in a space dominated by ByteDance and Tencent.

The Quark AI Chat Assistant lets users chat by text or voice, ask questions, and even solve problems using photos. It can write, edit images, and perform quick tasks like saving results or launching the camera all powered by Alibaba's latest large language model. The company said it plans to integrate even more tools through its Model Context Protocol to make the chatbot smarter over time.

Alibaba's challenge is scale. Its Tongyi app had about 7 million monthly users in September, far behind ByteDance's Doubao with 150 million and Tencent's 64 million. To broaden its reach, Alibaba also launched Quark AI Glasses, priced at 4,699 yuan ($659), with pre-sales kicking off Friday on Tmall and deliveries set for December. Investors are watching to see if this push can finally spark consumer traction.