Alibaba’s (BABA, 9988.HK) artificial intelligence chatbot Qwen has temporarily stopped issuing coupons due to an overload of customers, hampering a new campaign to promote the tool’s capabilities beyond just answering questions to assist with shopping.
Qwen began offering coupons to users on Friday, allowing in-app purchases from the Alibaba-owned retail platform using only chatbot prompts. The initiative is the first phase of a 3 billion yuan ($433 million) plan to attract more users to the chatbot during China’s annual Spring Festival holiday.
Since last month, Alibaba has been working to make Qwen a one-stop shop where users can access its other apps and complete payments directly within the chatbot, much like Google integrated its Gemini chatbot into apps like Maps.
But the rollout of the e-commerce giant’s so-called chatbot Agentic AI strategy has been hampered by technical difficulties since the coupon giveaway began.
Alibaba said 10 million orders were placed in the first nine hours of the event. Faced with a flood of attempted orders over the weekend, Qwen announced on its official Weibo channel on Sunday that it was overloaded and implored users to give the chatbot a break.
A Reuters investigation showed that repeated purchase prompts on Monday produced different versions of rejections, citing oversubscription by users.
“Everyone is so enthusiastic about experiencing artificial intelligence shopping! There are currently too many participants in ‘Qwen Free Order’, and we are working tirelessly to maintain the experience of the event,” Qwen replied in a purchase tip on Monday.
The chatbot added that shoppers still have time to redeem the coupons, which are valid until February 28.
Alibaba declined to comment further on the technical difficulties.
(1 USD = 6.9289 RMB)
(Reporting by Eduardo Baptista; Editing by Miyoung Kim and Joe Bavier)