Tencent has begun testing an AI assistant inside WeChat in China, giving a small number of users access to a tool called Xiaowei that can respond to text and voice commands and launch mini-programs within the app.
Tencent's customer service unit identified WeLM — Weixin's proprietary large language model — as Xiaowei's primary underlying model, with DeepSeek brought in to handle certain requests. Beyond launching mini-programs, the range of actions Xiaowei can take remains unspecified by the company, even as WeChat's catalog already includes services for ordering meals and hailing rides.
A full public release is something Tencent has set its sights on for the third quarter, according to The Next Web, with the current trial representing an early, narrowly distributed phase. Ultimately, Tencent envisions WeChat functioning as a voice- and text-driven interface through which users can navigate payments and services without manual navigation.
WeChat and its Chinese counterpart Weixin have more than 1.4 billion monthly active users combined, the company said. For Tencent, distributing AI through an app people already rely on daily sidesteps the considerable challenge of building a new user base from scratch — an advantage few rivals in the AI space can replicate at comparable scale.
Tencent has explored AI integration in WeChat before: Yuanbao, introduced earlier this year, functioned as a dedicated chatbot that users could add and converse with directly. Xiaowei departs from that model — where Yuanbao fielded questions, Xiaowei is built to take action throughout the app on the user's behalf.
The move is part of a broader effort by Tencent to compete in China's AI market alongside rivals including ByteDance, Alibaba, DeepSeek, and Zhipu. The Hunyuan brand covers Tencent's in-house model development efforts, and the company has moved to bolster its AI leadership by recruiting a former OpenAI researcher to serve as chief AI scientist, according to CNBC.
Tencent is not alone in embedding AI agents into super apps. Within the Alipay app, Alibaba's financial technology arm Ant Group has been running its own AI agent trials, with ride-booking and food ordering among the capabilities under evaluation, according to Bloomberg.