Alibaba AI chatbot halts coupons after user surge
Alibaba’s AI chatbot Qwen has temporarily stopped issuing shopping coupons after being overwhelmed by massive user demand during a major promotional campaign.
The chatbot began offering coupons last week, allowing users to make purchases on Alibaba retail platforms directly through chat prompts. The campaign is part of Alibaba’s 3-billion-yuan ($433 million) push to expand Qwen’s role beyond answering questions to becoming a full shopping assistant, News.Az reports, citing Reuters.
However, the rollout faced technical challenges as demand surged. Alibaba said about 10 million orders were placed within the first nine hours of the promotion. Over the weekend, the system became overloaded, prompting Qwen to ask users to be patient.
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When users attempted purchases, the chatbot responded that participation levels were too high but assured customers that coupons would remain valid until Feb. 28.
The initiative is part of Alibaba’s broader strategy to build “agentic AI,” allowing users to access multiple apps and complete payments directly through the chatbot — similar to how some global tech companies are integrating AI assistants across services.
Alibaba has not provided further details about the technical issues but said work is ongoing to stabilize the campaign experience.
By Aysel Mammadzada
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