2 min learnNew DelhiFeb 9, 2026 03:09 PM IST
Alibaba’s synthetic intelligence chatbot Qwen has briefly stopped issuing coupons on account of buyer overload, hampering a brand new marketing campaign to advertise the software’s capabilities past merely answering questions to help procuring.
Qwen started providing coupons to customers on Friday that enable for in-app purchases from Alibaba-owned retail platforms utilizing chatbot prompts alone. The initiative is the primary part in a 3-billion-yuan ($433 million) plan to draw extra customers to the chatbot throughout China’s annual Spring Pageant vacation.
Since final month, Alibaba has sought to make Qwen a one-stop store the place customers can entry its different apps instantly within the chatbot and full funds, very like Google integrates its Gemini chatbot into apps like Maps.
However the rollout of what the e-commerce large calls the chatbot’s Agentic AI technique has been marred by technical difficulties because the begin of the coupon giveaway.
Alibaba stated that 10 million orders have been positioned inside the first 9 hours of the marketing campaign. And confronted with an awesome flood of tried orders over the weekend, Qwen introduced on Sunday on its official Weibo channel that it was overloaded and pleaded for customers to provide the chatbot a break.
Repeated buy prompts on Monday generated totally different variations of a refusal, citing consumer oversubscription, Reuters checks confirmed.
“Everybody’s enthusiasm for experiencing AI procuring is simply too excessive! At the moment there are too many individuals in ‘Qwen free order’, we are working tirelessly to take care of the marketing campaign’s expertise,” replied Qwen to one of many buy prompts on Monday.
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The chatbot added that customers would nonetheless have time to redeem their coupons, which is able to stay legitimate till February 28.
Alibaba declined to remark additional on the technical difficulties.
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