Alibaba is reshaping the AI competitive landscape with an unprecedented "startup mentality." On January 15, the Qwen App announced its full integration with Alibaba's ecosystem businesses, including Taobao, Alipay, Taobao Flash Sales, Fliggy, and Amap, marking a global first by enabling AI-powered functions like food delivery, shopping, and flight booking, all of which are now open for public testing.
Wu Jia, President of the Qwen Consumer Business Group, stated that this upgrade will launch over 400 AI service functions, positioning the Qwen App as the world's first AI assistant capable of handling complex real-life tasks and leading the AI industry from the era of "chatting" into the "age of services."
Industry observers view this as an explosive demonstration of Alibaba's organizational strength, a classic case of "pooling resources to accomplish major tasks."
Putting AI to Work "After equipping AI with a super-powered brain, it is now growing hands and feet to interact with the real world, genuinely 'working' for users in their daily lives," said Wu Jia. "Qwen is the first AI that can truly help you get things done, with its advantage lying in the combination of the 'most powerful Qwen model' and 'Alibaba's richest ecosystem.'"
"The era of AI services has just begun, and some capabilities are still being explored," Wu Jia proclaimed ambitiously, aiming to build the Qwen App into the most powerful human-AI assistant for everyone. During the launch event, Wu Jia demonstrated the AI food delivery function live. By simply giving the Qwen App a one-sentence command, "Order 40 cups of Bawang Tea Ji's 'Bo Ya Jue Xian' for me," the app quickly invoked Taobao Flash Sales to place the order, completing the AI payment within the app without any redirects. This capability stems from a system-level integration between Qwen, Taobao Flash Sales, and the native AI payment capability "AI Pay" from Alipay. A user just needs to type "Order two lattes for me" in the chatbox, and Qwen can invoke Taobao Flash Sales' service capabilities to precisely locate and recommend suitable merchants, generate an order, and complete payment with one click via the built-in "Alipay AI Pay" function. After integrating with Taobao, the Qwen App can genuinely help users solve the dilemmas of "what to buy, how to choose, and whether it's worth buying." The app not only provides shopping suggestions based on users' real needs but also intelligently generates specific product recommendation plans leveraging Taobao's vast product database and review system. With a single command, users can complete the entire cycle from consumption decision to transaction within the Qwen App. Wu Jia indicated that for consumer scenarios, the internet is flooded with complex marketing information. Training the model's comprehension and discernment capabilities is crucial. The Qwen App doesn't rely solely on world knowledge; it also utilizes Alibaba's transaction and service data to enhance the model, thereby ensuring the accuracy of its AI shopping functions.
For broader life services, the Qwen App's reach extends into deep-seated areas of government affairs and travel. It has integrated with Alipay's government services, launching 50 civil services including visa and household registration applications. Users can simply consult in natural language, and Qwen can interpret policies and provide direct access to processing portals. Furthermore, the Qwen App demonstrates cross-application coordination capabilities. In a Spring Festival travel scenario, the app can invoke Fliggy's capabilities to book flights and hotels, and use Amap's functions for itinerary planning and New Year's Eve dinner reservations. It can even make phone calls to book restaurants directly for users.
"Special Forces" Style Internal Innovation To capture the AI-to-Consumer entry point, Qwen is accelerating its progress at the speed of a startup. Within Building C4 of Alibaba's Xixi Campus, the atmosphere of this transformation is palpable.
Sources close to Alibaba revealed that every Monday morning and Friday evening, suitcases pile up near the facial recognition access gates, as employees fly in from Beijing, Guangzhou, and other cities. Since last September, over a thousand engineers from various departments have been conducting closed-door development here, and this high-intensity operational mode is set to continue.
This "special forces" style development model has endowed the Qwen App with extreme entrepreneurial characteristics. It has undergone over a dozen iterations in less than two months since launch, maintaining an ultra-high update frequency of 2 to 3 times per week, with some features going from design to deployment in just 1 to 3 days. Compared to the pace of traditional large corporations, Qwen operates more like an agile startup. To break down functional silos, workstations in Building C4 are no longer arranged by department but are instead organized entirely by project teams. Employees from product, development, and algorithm departments work closely together, with product managers sitting directly across from developers, enabling rapid communication about requirements simply by swiveling their chairs.
In this environment, Qwen has also abandoned complex hierarchical reporting structures. Wu Jia, President of the Qwen C-end Business Group, seldom sits in meeting rooms listening to PPT presentations. He prefers to stand in front of a whiteboard, working through functional logic with the team, encouraging immediate collaboration and communication of ideas on the board.
This organizational model, which harkens back to an entrepreneurial spirit, is becoming Alibaba's core weapon for confronting the challenges of the AI era. In the AI era, the likely path for established large companies to engage in AI business is to establish a relatively independent organization that returns to an entrepreneurial spirit. Within Alibaba, from Taobao Flash Sales to Qwen, this shift towards "pooling resources to accomplish major tasks" is reshaping the form of the internet.
Whether it's Qwen, the Tongyi Lab, or DingTalk, this all-out effort to change the world is becoming a microcosm of large-scale corporate transformation.
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