Qwen is able to helps users find restaurants and plan trips. [Photo/Qwen]

Qwen integrated its first Alibaba ecosystem service — AutoNavi — bringing real-world navigation and location-based recommendations directly into the AI assistant.

The new version no longer just generates text suggestions. Users can now call AutoNavi and other underlying services to instantly create visual decision cards with recommended restaurants, hotels, points of interest, and travel routes. Clicking a card launches navigation or ride-hailing.

For example, a query like "Find highly rated hotels near Barkhor Street in Lhasa and nearby pharmacies with emergency supplies" generates a complete visual guide with hotels, pharmacies, and routes. Commuters can ask about traffic restrictions and get optimized bus or driving routes. Even photo-based queries, such as uploading a wedding invitation screenshot, allow Qwen to extract the location and recommend nearby hotels.

The app also supports sequential planning for complex tasks. A request like "I need to reach Lingyin Temple by 9 am tomorrow and suggest a good nearby cafe" generates a route-based plan that balances navigation with local recommendations.

By connecting to AutoNavi's massive real-time geographic database — covering over 200 million points of interest with more than 100 billion daily location queries — Qwen gains true spatial understanding and reasoning capabilities.

This integration marks the beginning of Qwen's evolution from a question-answering AI to a practical assistant capable of executing tasks in the real world. Future updates will link the app to Alibaba's broader ecosystem, including consumer, payment, and lifestyle services, enabling rapid expansion of its "do things for you" capabilities.

An image reflects the cooperation between Qwen and AutoNavi. [Photo/Qwen]