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Edited by Wendy Wen
Just ahead of the 618 shopping festival, Alibaba has integrated its AI-powered chatbot, Thousand Questions, with Taobao.
According to the company, Thousand Questions has achieved two-way interoperability with Taobao, allowing users to access Taobao’s 4 billion products and services, including logistics and after-sales support, directly within the chatbot.
In fact, when Thousand Questions underwent a major update in January, many had anticipated that Taobao’s integration was only a matter of time.
However, it took four months for the full-scale launch to materialize. A source close to the project revealed that the complexity of Taobao’s e-commerce ecosystem posed significant technical challenges, particularly in terms of algorithm development.
As we understand, the project’s underlying technology involves encapsulating Taobao’s search, order fulfillment, and after-sales services into skills that can be accessed and utilized by Thousand Questions, ultimately enabling AI-powered shopping.
When a user expresses a shopping need within Thousand Questions, the chatbot will invoke the corresponding Taobao skill to complete the matching and ordering process.
This project, like other significant AI initiatives by Alibaba, adopted a collaborative development approach, with Thousand Questions and Taobao teams working in tandem to advance the project.
Following the “Dragon Prawn” craze during the Spring Festival, there’s a growing consensus that AI products have transitioned from chatbots to agent-based services.
However, this shift has also led to a surge in token usage, exacerbating the demand for computational resources within large companies. Notably, Thousand Questions, as a key product in Alibaba’s “next-generation AI entrance” strategy, enjoys a higher priority in terms of computational resources within the group.
Looking back at the competition in the C-end (consumer) AI application field in the first half of the year, Thousand Questions’ situation is not without challenges.
Despite the surge in user growth during the Spring Festival’s red packet marketing campaign, Thousand Questions’ daily active users (DAU) have returned to around 30 million, while its monthly active users (MAU) have reached 166 million, still lagging behind its competitors.
Previously, there were rumors that a competitor, Bean Bag, would start charging users, marking its entry into the commercialization phase. Thousand Questions, as a follower, seems to be highlighting its AI-powered shopping capabilities as a key differentiator.
Bean Bag had already completed a similar layout, integrating with Douyin Mall in 2025 and further connecting with Douyin in May, allowing users to complete the entire shopping process, from product queries to orders, within the app.
However, an industry insider believes that Taobao’s product richness and e-commerce ecosystem maturity surpass those of Douyin Mall. In terms of user experience, Bean Bag’s shopping process ends at the ordering stage, requiring users to return to Douyin to view their orders, whereas Thousand Questions offers a more complete shopping experience.
But do ordinary users really need to shop through AI chatbots?
“AI shopping functionality is indeed a bit ahead of its time, and users need time to develop this habit.” An insider close to Alibaba noted that this AI shopping feature is not yet part of the company’s commercialization plans, focusing more on user demand matching.
However, the benefits of AI in boosting B-end (business) productivity are becoming increasingly clear. Alibaba’s AI-powered customer service product, “Shopkeeper,” has already made commercialization attempts, being one of the company’s most token-intensive products.
Is Thousand Questions’ AI shopping move too premature? Honestly, AI e-commerce is still in its early stages, and there’s a long way to go before it meets large-scale user demands. Nevertheless, this direction holds long-term value, and AI shopping might be an evolving path.
The upcoming 618 shopping festival will be the first major test for the AI shopping project. As of now, the teams behind Thousand Questions and Taobao have not disclosed specific user usage rates or conversion data for AI shopping, and we might need to wait until after the 618 festival to get a clearer picture.
