Pulse News

**Title: Alibaba to Revamp Quark AI Search App**

Alibaba Group said Thursday that it will overhaul its Quark artificial intelligence search app for consumers in China and turn it into a broader all-purpose assistant powered by the company's own Qwen AI models.

Alibaba, a leader in China's market for enterprise AI models and apps for businesses, is trying to increase its presence in the fiercely competitive market for consumer AI products by enhancing Quark's capabilities. In the consumer segment, Alibaba is struggling to catch up with ByteDance, which operates China's biggest AI chatbot app, Doubao, and DeepSeek, whose app surged in popularity last month.

Until now, Quark has been using the app's own AI models known as QuarkLLM, but Alibaba will revamp the search app by powering it with the company's flagship Qwen models instead. Alibaba said the new Quark will be able to help execute tasks ranging from academic research to medical diagnostics to travel planning.

Alibaba originally launched Quark in 2016 as a web browser, but the company later turned the product into an AI search app as it began to focus on generative AI.