Alibaba's Qwen explains the three keys to personal AI agents

At the 2026 China Computer Conference, Jiang Guanjun, AI algorithm lead of Alibaba's Qwen team, shared how they build personal AI agents. He said AI apps move through three stages: chat, agent, and assistant. Now they are speeding toward the assistant stage, where AI plans and acts around user goals.

He pointed out that model, memory, and ecosystem are the three key elements. For models, Qwen built a user needs map covering more than 30 major industries and listed over 8,000 model capabilities, with industry experts joining the review. For memory, the system needs to understand users over time and link past talks with current needs.

For the ecosystem, Qwen is building an open service system centered on its model, bringing in expert knowledge, tools, and third-party agents, covering e-commerce, healthcare, and education. Together, these elements lead to proactive service. Users can build apps for work, life, and study just by saying what they want, no coding needed.