Alibaba launches AI chatbot service in renewed consumer push

Alibaba launched a new AI chatbot assistant service on Thursday, refreshing its push into a consumer-facing space that is dominated by ByteDance and Tencent.

The Chinese ecommerce 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 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…