Alibaba released a new version of the Quark application, a comprehensive AI assistant powered by Alibaba’s Qwen-based advanced reasoning model. Quark is the first within Alibaba’s general user-facing businesses to fully leverage its proprietary foundation models, marking an important milestone in Alibaba’s artificial intelligence strategy to integrate AI across its businesses.
With the reasoning proficiency from Qwen, the revamped Quark offers advanced capabilities such as AI chatbot, deep thinking, deep research, and task execution into an easy user interface. It aims to handle tasks ranging from academic research to document drafting, image generation, presentations, medical diagnostics, travel planning, and problem-solving.
It allows users to ask complex, multi-part questions and follow-ups with more in-depth information on a topic directly within the search engines. Compared to other mainstream AI chatbots, it excels at providing real-time, precise, and comprehensive information drawn from multiple online sources, complete with reference links embedded in the responses for easy verification and further exploration.
The upgraded Quark reimagines the traditional search experience by transforming it into an all-in-one AI super assistant designed to fulfill the work-life needs of more than 200 million users in China.
“This upgraded version of Quark is just the beginning. As our model capabilities continue to evolve, we envision Quark as a gateway to endless possibilities where users can explore everything with AI,” said Wu Jia, CEO of Quark and Vice President of Alibaba Group.
During its most recent earnings announcement, Alibaba Group shared that the company will increase investments in three core areas of its AI strategy over the next three years: infrastructure for AI and cloud computing, development of foundational models and AI-native applications, and AI integration across existing businesses. “We believe the integration of large AI models has immense potential to enhance search, productivity, content creation, and workplace efficiency,” said Eddie Wu, CEO of Alibaba Group, during the company’s recent earnings call.
Launched in 2016 as a web browser incubated within Alibaba Group, Quark has become a leading AI-powered information services platform. Today, it has the largest user base for AI search in the market, with over 200 million users in China.
By transforming Quark into an intuitive AI super assistant, Alibaba is leveraging its foundation models to further enhance end-user experiences as part of its ongoing effort to turn innovations into practical daily applications. The upgraded Quark will be available to all users gradually starting with a pilot launched today to ensure the best user experience.
