Meituan AI Agent Launches

Meituan has introduced a new AI agent application designed to enhance its food delivery and local services. This move comes as competition intensifies with Alibaba in the battle for Chinese consumers.

The AI agent, named Xiao Mei, is currently undergoing public testing. It aims to provide personalised local life services, including food ordering, restaurant recommendations, and navigation, through natural language interaction. The system uses internal interface calls to deliver these services. Meituan's AI logistics team has already made strides, shortening average delivery times and improving dispatch system capabilities.

Meituan has also unveiled LongCat-Flash-Chat, a large language model with 560 billion parameters. This open-source model is intended to compete with Alibaba Cloud's Qwen, offering faster inference speeds and lower costs. Meituan's CEO stated the company's aggressive AI approach, viewing AI as a disruptor across all industries.