WeChat expands AI with Tencent's Xiaowei agent and TicNote hardware

Tencent Holdings is testing a native AI assistant called Xiaowei inside its WeChat messaging platform, which serves up to 1.4 billion users. The early version, released to a limited group in late June, allows voice or text commands to search online, organise chats and Moments, draft replies and trigger mini‑apps for tasks such as booking flights or ordering food. Tencent built its own WeLM large‑language model for the feature and also incorporates the latest DeepSeek model, though some transactions still require several minutes and occasional manual input. Analysts say the service could reinforce user stickiness and help WeChat fend off rivals such as Alibaba and ByteDance.

Separately, AI‑focused firm Outgoing (出门问问) has launched the TicNote enterprise‑WeChat collaboration device, a portable AI recorder that integrates directly with the corporate version of WeChat. The hardware records up to 32 hours continuously, transcribes speech, identifies multiple speakers, generates summaries and extracts to‑do items that can be assigned within WeChat. It offers end‑to‑end AES‑128 encryption, BLE 5.3 connectivity and remote data wipe for security. The device aims to bring voice‑generated information into the structured workflow of the more than 14 billion WeChat users, targeting corporate use cases such as meetings, client visits and internal chats.