Chinese technology company Tencent is a gaming giant and the parent company of WeChat, a widely popular social messaging app in China.
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tencent It is testing an AI assistant within WeChat in China, the tech giant said on Monday, as it looks to step up efforts to take on rivals in China’s competitive artificial intelligence market.
Tencent said in a statement translated by CNBC that its “native AI assistant” Xiaowei is being tested “on a small scale” on Weixin, China’s version of WeChat.
Users can interact with Xiaowei via text and voice, communicate with friends, and launch “mini programs,” Tencent added. A mini-program is an app that runs within WeChat.
Tencent executives have been considering further integrating AI into WeChat since last year, and investors are watching to see if this could become a new revenue source and a way to monetize AI.
WeChat and Weixin have a combined monthly active user count of over 1.4 billion, the majority of which are in China. It has become an integral part of daily life in China, where people can use it to message friends, make payments, and book restaurant reservations.
By integrating AI tools into an app with a huge user base, Tencent has the opportunity to gain a large user base for its services.
The company did not provide details about what capabilities Xiaowei has or what AI model it is based on.
Tech companies are discussing the possibility of so-called AI agents. AI agents are thought of as digital assistants that can perform complex tasks on behalf of users across a variety of apps and services.
The new AI assistant is part of Tencent’s big move to take on rivals such as: alibabaDeepSeek and Zhipu in China, which has become a highly competitive AI market. This year, Tencent poached an OpenAI researcher to become its lead AI scientist.
Tencent has also developed its own family of models under the brand name Hunyuan.
