China's AI 'throne' changes hands.

A Quark billboard at Nanning Airport, China. Photo: Simon Song/SCMP .

Quark, an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant product developed by Alibaba Group from its search app, has seen significant growth in popularity. In March, the app surpassed ByteDance's Doubao to become the most widely used AI in China.

According to data from Aicpb.com, a website that tracks the popularity of AI products, Quark has risen to the top among Chinese AI applications with nearly 150 million monthly active users (MAU) globally. Following closely behind are ByteDance's Doubao with nearly 100 million users and DeepSeek with approximately 77 million users.

Notably, Aicpb.com aggregates data from Apple and Google app stores worldwide , as well as Android app stores in China, but excludes direct visits to chatbot websites.

Previously, Alibaba announced that the total number of users of the Quark app, including both mobile and desktop versions, had reached 200 million. However, the company has not yet disclosed detailed information on the number of users on each specific platform.

Before being overtaken by Quark, Doubao, owned by TikTok's parent company, held the number one position with over 100 million monthly users. Photo: SCMP.

Another report published in early March by the American venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz ranked Quark as the 6th most popular AI application globally on the MAU scale, behind only Baidu's AI Search, OpenAI's ChatGPT, and Microsoft's AI-integrated Edge browser.

Quark's rapid growth came after Alibaba transformed the app from a traditional cloud storage and search service into a platform it calls a "super artificial intelligence assistant."

In March, Alibaba officially introduced an upgraded version of Quark, which operates on the company's own "Qwen" reasoning models. These are AI models designed to "think" before responding to queries, making them suitable for handling complex tasks.

Alibaba says Quark can support tasks such as academic research, word processing, image creation, presentations, medical diagnosis, travel planning, text and image creation, and programming.

Quark reflects the general trend among Chinese tech companies in developing AI chatbots with diverse features, turning them into "AI super apps" to attract users in an increasingly competitive market.

In an effort to replicate the success of its flagship app, Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok), ByteDance has rapidly added features to Doubao. The app now allows users to search the internet and create text and images. The company is reportedly testing the ability to create videos on Doubao.

Tencent is also improving its Yuanbao chatbot by adding a diverse library of AI agents. These are programs designed to automatically perform tasks at the request of users or the system. In addition, Tencent has integrated Yuanbao into WeChat, one of the most widely used applications in China.

Source: https://znews.vn/ngoi-vuong-ai-trung-quoc-doi-chu-post1545622.html