Alibaba is reportedly planning to rebrand its mobile AI chatbot that is presently called “Tongyi”. The Chinese tech giant is set to rename the chatbot to “Qwen” as a way to re-launch it with more advanced agentic AI features, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, November 13 citing people familiar with the matter.
Alibaba had launched Tongyi in April 2023 following OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, which had instantly taken the world by storm. At the time of its launch, Alibaba had explained the platform as an “efficiency assistant”, capable of accurately translating languages and generating creative and unique content.
As part of its revamp, Alibaba is planning to load up the AI chatbot with shopping integration features that will allow users to place online orders from the Taobao marketplace from within its interface, the report noted. Taobao is among China’s biggest e-commerce marketplaces, also owned by Alibaba.
In the coming time, Alibaba is looking to make this chatbot available internationally as a full-functional AI agent operating at par with rivals like ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Google Gemini, and Grok among others.
The Hangzhou, China-based tech mammoth has been working on improving its AI services for a while now.
In September this year, the company had said that it plans to shell out over $53 billion over the next three years to develop AI models in order to keep up with the global AI race. The company shares had risen by over 87 percent to hit four year-highs after it shared its intent about diving deeper into AI.
For now, the company has neither confirmed nor denied the reports on Tongyi’s reported upcoming rename and revamp.
A team of over a hundred AI experts are working on giving Tongyi its upcoming makeover, the Bloomberg report added. The company also recently unveiled its smart eyewear products powered by its proprietary AI technology.
As of Thursday, Alibaba’s stock has clocked mixed market reactions. Despite a $25 million investment from Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest across three ETFs this week, the company’s stock price has seen a drop of 2.87 percent.