Alibaba upgrades Qwen App with agentic capabilities

Alibaba Group announced on Thursday a major upgrade to its flagship consumer-facing artificial intelligence application, Qwen App, marking a further step in the company's long-term strategy to bring advanced AI capabilities into practical everyday use.

This shift from "AI that responds" to "AI that acts" is enabled by Qwen App's deep integration with core services from Alibaba's ecosystem, including Taobao, Taobao Instant Commerce, Alipay, Fliggy, and Amap. Qwen App intelligently coordinates services across multiple platforms through a unified AI interface, allowing users to move seamlessly from intent to completion. These new features are now available for public testing in China.

With the latest upgrade, Qwen App is moving beyond conversational interaction to become a system capable of autonomously completing end-to-end actions.

With a single voice or text request, users can now order food, complete in-chat payments, plan and book travel, call restaurants, and manage multi-step tasks — without switching between applications or manually navigating workflows.

"AI is evolving from intelligence to agency," said Wu Jia, vice-president of Alibaba Group. "What we are launching today represents a shift from models that understand to systems that act — deeply connected to real-world services."

"Wu added that Qwen App is Alibaba's approach to the next era of AI applications: not just powerful, but genuinely useful in everyday life. "By making these capabilities freely available, we aim to help users offload repetitive tasks to an intelligent assistant they can rely on."

The initial set of agentic capabilities focuses on scenarios where users already have established habits and expectations, such as local services, shopping and travel.

In quick commerce, Qwen App can place real-time food and beverage orders through Taobao Instant Commerce, with available promotions automatically applied and payments completed directly within the conversation.