China's Alibaba halts AI coupon push after demand overwhelms chatbot

Alibaba's artificial intelligence chatbot Qwen has temporarily stopped issuing coupons due to customer overload, hampering a new campaign to promote the tool's capabilities beyond simply answering questions to assist shopping.

Qwen began offering coupons to users on Friday that allow for in-app purchases from Alibaba-owned retail platforms using chatbot prompts alone. The initiative is the first phase in a $433 million plan to attract more users to the chatbot during China's annual Spring Festival holiday.

Since last month, Alibaba has sought to make Qwen a one-stop shop where users can access its other apps directly in the chatbot and complete payments, much like Google integrates its Gemini chatbot into apps like Maps.

But the rollout of what the e-commerce giant calls the chatbot's Agentic AI strategy has been marred by technical difficulties since the start of the coupon giveaway.

Alibaba said that 10 million orders were placed within the first nine hours of the campaign. And faced with an overwhelming flood of attempted orders over the weekend, Qwen announced on Sunday on its official Weibo channel that it was overloaded and pleaded for users to give the chatbot a break.

Repeated purchase prompts on Monday generated different versions of a refusal, citing user oversubscription, Reuters checks showed.

"Everyone's enthusiasm for experiencing AI shopping is too high! Currently there are too many participants in 'Qwen free order', we are working tirelessly to maintain the campaign's experience," replied Qwen to one of the purchase prompts on Monday.

The chatbot added that shoppers would still have time to redeem their coupons, which will remain valid until February 28.

Alibaba declined to comment further on the technical difficulties.

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