Chinese e-commerce and cloud computing giant Alibaba has launched its first artificial intelligence-powered smart glasses and an advanced AI chat assistant, signaling a major push into the consumer technology sector and directly challenging global competitors.
The new “Quark AI Glasses” offer real-time language translation, hands-free calling, and music playback. These features are powered by Alibaba’s internally developed Qwen language models.
Pre-orders for the glasses are set to begin on October 24 through Alibaba’s Tmall platform. The initial price is set at $659.4, with a discounted offer available for $561.1. Shipments are anticipated to start in December of this year.
This move directly pits Alibaba against tech rivals like Meta, which produces Ray-Ban smart glasses, and Xiaomi, which also recently introduced an AI-capable model. Alibaba views wearables, particularly smart glasses, as “the next frontier in computing.”
Accompanying the glasses, Alibaba also unveiled a new AI chat assistant integrated into its Quark application. This assistant, built on the Qwen3 models, enables users to interact through both voice and text.
The app-based assistant combines search and conversational capabilities. It also includes tools for image editing, assisted writing, and a function for “photo-based problem solving,” which appears designed for visual analysis of mathematical or logical exercises.
This dual launch underscores Alibaba’s broader strategy to embed artificial intelligence into consumer products, moving beyond its traditional focus on e-commerce and cloud services. The company’s stock responded positively to the announcement, rising 1.7% on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with similar gains seen in pre-market trading in the United States.
Alibaba has invested heavily in its Qwen model family, primarily to bolster its cloud division and offer AI solutions to businesses. However, these recent announcements indicate a clear intention to bring its advanced AI technology directly to everyday users.
The diversification aligns with a global trend of integrating artificial intelligence into daily products and positions Alibaba against other major AI developers, including OpenAI and DeepSeek, in the race for advanced conversational AI and multimodal models. Smart glasses are increasingly considered a potential successor to smartphones in personal computing.