Alibaba tests paid AI appetite with US$30 annual QwenWork subscription

The e-commerce giant launches paid tiers for its QwenWork assistant as costs for artificial intelligence mount

The e-commerce giant’s Qwen app now offers three membership tiers for QwenWork, with annual plans ranging from 200 yuan (US$29.6) to 1,499 yuan for its flagship version, according to the listing on Apple’s App Store.

Users can also buy extra video generation credits, priced between 26 yuan and 968 yuan, depending on usage limits.

This comes after Alibaba earlier this month opened public testing for QwenWork, initially offering the work productivity AI agent free of charge to accelerate adoption.

The Qwen chatbot remains free to use. Alibaba, which owns the South China Morning Post, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.