Alibaba Unveils AI Chatbot and Prices AI Glasses at $659

Alibaba has unveiled a new artificial intelligence chatbot for consumers and announced the pricing and launch date of its new AI glasses.

The company’s consumer-facing AI application, Quark, announced the Quark AI Chat Assistant, saying it enables users to access real-time information and services via text or voice, according to a Thursday (Oct. 23) press release.

Integrated into the Quark app and powered by Alibaba’s latest Qwen3 models, the chatbot provides a combination of search and conversation, as well as capabilities around deep search, photo-based problem solving, AI writing and photo editing, according to the release.

It will also “further integrate various MCP (Model Context Protocol) tools from within the Alibaba ecosystem to continuously enhance its task execution abilities,” the release said.

Alibaba’s Quark AI Glasses will be available for pre-sale Friday (Oct. 24) at midnight on the company’s eCommerce platform, Tmall, according to the release. Quark will start shipping the AI glasses in December.

Quark AI Glasses will also be available for reservations on major Chinese eCommerce platforms like JD.com and Douyin, with purchasing and delivery to start in December, the release said.

The pre-sale price of the AI glasses will be RMB 4699 (about $659), with discounts available to select customers reducing the price to as low as RMB 3699 (about $519), per the release.

Unveiled in July at this year’s World AI Conference in Shanghai, the Quark AI Glasses are the first AI glasses developed by Alibaba, according to the release.

Powered by the Qwen large language model and Quark’s multimodal AI capabilities, the AI glasses support hands-free calling, music streaming, real-time language translation and meeting transcription, per the release.

When unveiling Quark AI Glasses in July, Alibaba said in a press release: “Designed for professionals, travelers and tech enthusiasts, the glasses seamlessly connect with Alibaba’s ecosystem — from Amap navigation to Taobao price comparisons, Alipay payments and Fliggy travel alerts — all via voice commands.”

It was reported in September that Alibaba’s investments in AI could make it one of the world’s biggest companies. The firm invested more than $3.3 billion in AI-related startups over the past three years, invested more than $14 billion in AI infrastructure and research over the past year, and plans to invest $53.42 billion in AI and cloud infrastructure over the next three years.

Alibaba Chairman Joe Tsai said in July that the company aims to have AI everywhere, “both within the company to help our efficiency, productivity, but also AI infused into every app that we make for consumers, as well as using our cloud computing system to support the AI applications for enterprises and developers.”

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