Alibaba's AI chatbot Qwen has temporarily suspended issuing shopping coupons after being overwhelmed by a surge in demand, disrupting a fresh push to position the tool as more than just a question-and-answer assistant. The chatbot started distributing coupons on Friday that enable users to complete purchases within Alibaba-owned retail platforms directly through chatbot prompts.

This campaign marks the opening stage of a 3 billion yuan ($433 million) effort aimed at boosting user engagement during China's Spring Festival holiday. However, the company's so-called Agentic AI rollout has encountered technical setbacks since the coupon campaign began. Alibaba said 10 million orders were submitted within the first nine hours.

As traffic intensified over the weekend, Qwen posted on its official Weibo account on Sunday that the system was struggling to cope and urged users to ease activity. The chatbot reportedly responded to one purchase request on Monday, according to Reuters, stating that customers would still be able to use their coupons, which remain valid through February 28. In recent weeks, Alibaba has been working to transform Qwen into a unified interface where users can access its broader ecosystem of apps and finalize transactions without leaving the chatbot, similar to how Google embeds its Gemini assistant into services such as Maps.