Known as ‘Weixin’ in China, WeChat has rolled out the AI agent on a phased basis.

Tencent is testing a new AI assistant on its ‘super app’ WeChat, as the company attempts to catch up with its Chinese and global contemporaries.

WeChat – known as ‘Weixin’ in China – is China’s most popular messaging platform with roughly 1.4bn users, and also has functions for social media, ride-hailing and payments. WeChat has rolled out the agent on a phased basis.

Users can interact with the AI agent, called ‘Xiaowei’, via text or voice, and complete tasks by tapping into mini apps. The agent assists with a wide range of tasks, including changing settings, sending messages, ordering food, hailing rides and generating images.

Xiaowei uses WeChat’s own large language model WeLM, while also tapping into DeepSeek to process some queries.

Tencent is closely associated with DeepSeek, reportedly leading a recent $7.4bn round into the AI start-up. The company was also reported to have proposed taking a 20pc stake in the start-up.

Meanwhile, The Information reported last week that Tencent was preparing to purchase Manus back from Meta after China blocked the $2bn acquisition. HSG and ZhenFund are also reportedly looking to buy back Manus using fresh capital.

Despite holding stakes in leading AI companies in the country, Tencent trails behind its peers ByteDance and Alibaba over adoption and advances in AI technology.

Alibaba has integrated travel, maps and e-commerce services into its Qwen AI app, while ByteDance has added agentic functions into its app called Doubao.

The Financial Times reported on Tencent’s plans to launch the embedded AI agent earlier this month, with added pressure from its well-performing contemporaries.

The publication reported that the company made the AI agent roll-out its highest strategic priority, while internal estimates suggest that a full roll-out of  Xiaowei will be very costly for the company. Tencent itself already has an embedded chatbot with search functions in WeChat called Yuanbao.

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