BEIJING — Alibaba-affiliate Ant Group is doubling down on health care with a new smartphone app, based on artificial intelligence technology that the company says could be rolled out overseas.
It’s the latest sign of how China-developed AI is quickly building consumer applications. Ant, operator of the popular Alipay mobile payments app, has focused much of its AI development efforts on health care based on large language models from DeepSeek, Alibaba and Ant.
In a telling sign of global aspirations, the new health-care app launched on Thursday has a straightforward English name — AQ — which stands for “answer your question,” said Zhang Junjie, general manager of health-care business at Alipay.
Users can consult AI avatars of real-life medical specialists before getting priority access for a diagnostic appointment or hospital care if the situation is serious enough, he said. AQ can tap more than 5,000 hospitals and nearly 1 million doctors in China, according to Ant.
While Ant’s focus is on the mainland China market for now, the new app or its tech could be licensed out to a third party, Zhang said, without specifying a time frame. He said many foreigners in China have already used a pilot version of the app, and that Ant plans to release versions of the app in other languages.