Tencent tests AI assistant in WeChat in China to catch up with rivals
Chinese tech company Tencent is a gaming giant and the parent company of WeChat, the ubiquitous social messaging app in China.
Cheng Xin | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Tencent The tech giant is testing an AI assistant within WeChat in China, it said on Monday, as it plans to step up its efforts to challenge rivals in the country’s competitive AI market.
Xiaowei, a “native AI assistant,” is being tested “on a small scale” on Weixin, the Chinese version of WeChat, Tencent said in a statement translated by CNBC.
Tencent added that users can interact with Xiaowei via text or voice, communicate with friends and launch “mini programs”. Miniprograms are applications that run inside WeChat.
Tencent executives have been mulling further integration of AI into WeChat since last year, and investors are watching closely to see if it could be a new revenue stream and way to monetize AI.
WeChat and Weixin have more than 1.4 billion monthly active users, the majority of whom are in China. It’s an essential part of daily life in China, where people use the app to message friends, make payments, book restaurants and much more.
By integrating an AI tool into an application with a large user base, Tencent has the opportunity to capture a large number of users for its services.
“Placing an assistant on Weixin is the first time Tencent has leveraged the advantage it has had all along, and that’s a big deal,” Howard Yu, LEGO management and innovation professor at IMD, told CNBC via email.
“A standalone chatbot responds to you. An assistant connected to Weixin completes the task. And it is this second advantage that no competitor can replicate,” Yu added.
The company did not provide further details about the capabilities Xiaowei might have or what AI models it is based on.
Tech companies are talking about the potential of AI agents, which they see as digital assistants that can perform complex tasks on behalf of the user across different applications and services.
New AI assistant is part of a larger push by Tencent to challenge rivals Alibaba’sDeepSeek and Zhipu are in China, which has become an incredibly competitive AI market. This year, Tencent hired an OpenAI researcher to be its chief AI scientist.
Tencent also develops its own model family under the Hunyuan brand.
