Alibaba Launches Public Beta of Qwen AI Assistant App

Alibaba's Qwen App Public Beta Launch: An Overview

In a significant move towards enhancing AI applications in daily life, Alibaba announced on January 17th the official launch of the public beta for its Qwen App, a personal AI assistant freely available to all users.

The Qwen App is built upon the Qwen3 open-source model, recognized as the top-performing globally. The app aims to serve as a personal assistant capable of both "conversing" and "handling tasks.""

Integrating Daily Services into a Single App

Alibaba plans to integrate a wide range of daily services into the Qwen App, including maps, food delivery, ticket booking, office services, education, shopping, and healthcare. This integration aims to empower users to accomplish a variety of everyday tasks through a single application.

The public beta version is currently available in major app stores, as well as via web and PC access.

Public Beta Challenges and Solutions

The first day of the Qwen App's public beta witnessed a surge in users, leading to congestion and disruption of some services. Many users reported being unable to get responses after entering commands, with the app indicating "entry congestion.""

The hashtag "Alibaba Qwen App Crashed" quickly trended on Weibo. Alibaba officially responded that the system status was good and welcomed users to use the app, stating "I am fine, the status is good, welcome to ask.""

The Power of the Qwen Open Source Model

The Qwen App is built upon the Qwen series of large models. Since Qwen was fully open-sourced in 2023, its performance has surpassed other global open-source models such as Llama and Deepseek, and global downloads have exceeded 600 million times.

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky stated that the company's business relies heavily on Qwen, considering it faster and more efficient than OpenAI models. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang pointed out that Qwen occupies a significant share of the global open-source model market and continues to expand.

Alibaba's Investments in AI Infrastructure

Alibaba announced earlier this year that it would invest 380 billion yuan in building AI infrastructure, and plans to add more investment. At the Yunqi Conference on September 24, Alibaba released the Tongyi flagship model Qwen3-Max and the next-generation basic model architecture Qwen3-Next, of which the Qwen3-Max-Instruct preview version ranked third in the LMArena text list, surpassing GPT-5-Chat. At the same time, Alibaba announced its cooperation with Nvidia in the field of PhysicalAI to provide enterprise users with full-link platform services.

App Design and Integrated Functions

It is understood that the Qwen App was developed by Alibaba's Intelligent Information Business Group, with the participation of multiple departments including Alibaba Cloud, Tongyi Laboratory, Taotian, and Gaode. The app's design is extremely simple, and online search is turned on by default to reduce the risk of "hallucinations" in large models, while integrating functions such as image generation, AI image editing, video calls, and real-time translation.

Future Developments and E-commerce Features

Alibaba stated that the public beta version is an initial version, and agent-type AI functions will be gradually added in the future, especially in the shopping experience on e-commerce platforms such as Taobao.