BEIJING, Oct 23 (Reuters) -

Alibaba ( BABA ) launched a new AI chatbot assistant

service on Thursday, refreshing its push into a consumer-facing

space that is dominated by ByteDance and Tencent ( TCTZF ).

The Chinese e-commerce firm integrated the chat

assistant into its Quark app, a platform that began as a browser

but has been repositioned this year as Alibaba's ( BABA ) flagship

consumer application, with added artificial intelligence

functions including search capabilities.

The new service, which is free to use, allows people to

access a chatbot interface for conversations via text or voice,

providing real-time information and services, the company said

in a statement.

Alibaba's ( BABA ) AI efforts have focused largely on enterprise

clients through its cloud services division. The latest move is

another attempt to capture consumers in a market where the

company has struggled to gain traction with its Tongyi AI

assistant app.

Despite being among the first Chinese companies to release a

consumer AI assistant app to the public in late 2023, Tongyi has

failed to achieve widespread adoption.

The app had 6.96 million monthly active users in September,

according to AI product tracker Aicpb.com. Market leader

ByteDance's Doubao had 150 million monthly active users, while

DeepSeek had 73.4 million and Tencent ( TCTZF ) followed with 64.2

million.

Globally, AI assistants have been gaining traction for

companies like Google, Microsoft ( MSFT ) and OpenAI,

who have embedded them into their Gemini, Copilot and ChatGPT

platforms.

Powered by Alibaba's ( BABA ) latest Qwen3 models, Quark's AI chat

assistant offers enhanced reasoning, understanding and execution

capabilities, the company said.

Separately on Thursday, Alibaba ( BABA ) said pre-sales for its Quark

AI Glasses would begin at midnight on Friday on its Tmall

e-commerce platform. The company said it would begin fulfilling

orders progressively from December, with the glasses priced at

4,699 yuan ($659.69).

Alibaba ( BABA ) unveiled its smart glasses in July, joining

companies like Meta Platforms ( META ) in the market for

wearable AI devices.

($1 = 7.1230 Chinese yuan)

(Reporting by Liam Mo and Brenda Goh; Editing by Thomas

Derpinghaus.)