Alibaba upgrades its AI app and faces new competition from ByteDance

Alibaba has released a major upgrade to its Qwen AI application, adding new 'agentic' capabilities that allow it to perform tasks more autonomously. The company also announced that its open-source AI models have been downloaded over 700 million times globally.

Meanwhile, ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, is launching a new AI-focused cloud service, positioning it as a direct competitor to Alibaba's cloud business.