The Financial Times reported that Tencent is stepping up its efforts to launch an embedded artificial intelligence agent (AI agent) in WeChat. This tool will be deeply integrated into this "super application" that covers China's 1.4 billion population and includes almost all kinds of functions such as social networking, payment and travel. According to people familiar with the matter, Tencent has been testing the prototype of this AI agent internally and plans to launch the regulatory compliance process as soon as this month to prepare for its official launch to the public.
After compliance approval, Tencent plans to first conduct a trial with a small number of external users, and then gradually increase the volume in stages. The specific official launch time has not yet been determined, because there is great uncertainty in the time required for the compliance process. Tencent's Hong Kong-listed stock price rose as much as 6% on Tuesday after reports on the plans were released, reflecting the capital market's high attention to WeChat's AI progress.
According to a person who has seen early demonstrations, in the future, users will only need to swipe right on the main WeChat interface to open the AI agent chat window and enter instructions through natural language. The agent can automatically call the millions of mini programs within WeChat, the "foundation" of the WeChat ecosystem, to help users complete specific tasks including finding cafes and ordering based on taste and price preferences.
Once the AI agent is successfully launched in China's most frequently used applications, Tencent is expected to overtake domestic competitors in the implementation of "intelligent agents", although it was once regarded by its peers as a slow start in the development of large models. At present, Alibaba has integrated e-commerce, travel and map services into its Qwen AI application, while ByteDance has added "agent-style" functions such as online shopping to its Doubao application.
Although the number of monthly active users of Tongyi Qianwen and Doubao is far less than that of WeChat, which has 1.4 billion users, these two products are growing rapidly and put considerable time pressure on Tencent. According to people familiar with the matter, this is one of the reasons why Tencent is eager to launch WeChat AI agents as soon as possible; currently, Tencent has embedded the chat robot "Yuanbao" with search capabilities in WeChat, but the new generation of AI agents will greatly improve the ability to automate tasks.
A person familiar with internal decision-making said that Tencent has elevated the implementation of WeChat AI agents to the company’s highest strategic priority. However, Tencent's management is extremely cautious in all aspects such as functional design, security and compliance. It is expected that it will undergo a long period of grayscale testing and multiple rounds of polishing iterations before it is officially launched.
The above-mentioned people familiar with the matter revealed that based on internal testing, the prototype system can already complete various tasks relatively smoothly, but when it is truly launched on a large scale to more than one billion users, computing resources will become a prominent challenge. Before the U.S. ban, Chinese Internet giants mainly relied on Nvidia chips to build AI data centers, and related high-end chips are now banned from being exported to China.
The person said that Tencent had been relatively conservative in purchasing Nvidia chips before and did not stock up on large quantities before the ban. However, local semiconductor production capacity is still tight, which has caused a certain gap in the supply of computing power. Early internal assessments show that the cost of fully launching AI agents on WeChat will be very high, and it is still unclear whether Tencent can find enough commercialization paths in the short term to cover these investments.
Since its inception as an instant messaging tool in 2011, WeChat (Chinese name “WeChat”, also known internally as “WeChat/Weixin”) has evolved into a critical infrastructure deeply embedded in every aspect of daily life in China. Relying on the mini program ecosystem developed and operated by enterprises and government agencies, users can complete a large number of daily tasks such as food delivery, paying utility bills, and registering for medical treatment within WeChat. Most daily transactions can be completed with almost no need to jump out of the app.
This highly integrated product form allows Tencent to accumulate huge behavioral data from more than one billion users, providing a data basis for training and deploying "agent AI" for specific scenarios. Tencent President Liu Chiping said in an earnings call last month that in addition to the general basic model, "agent AI" is increasingly showing disruptive application prospects, and Tencent's platform is naturally suitable as a hosting environment for AI agents.
Tencent declined to comment on the specific plans and timetable for WeChat AI agents. The report also pointed out that under the multiple constraints of computing power, cost and compliance review, whether and when this "WeChat intelligent agent" can be fully implemented is still the focus of attention from the outside world.