(Yicai) Sept. 11 -- Chinese internet giant Alibaba Group Holding has released a major update to its navigation platform Amap, adding a new artificial intelligence-powered feature allowing users to leave a ranking for local businesses just like on Dianping, an app by rival Meituan.

Users can review restaurants, hotels, tourist attractions, and others using the new Amap Street Stars, Hangzhou-based Alibaba announced yesterday, adding that it will offer over CNY1 billion (USD140.4 million) of incentives to support the spending of 10 million customers on car rides, dining, and other services.

Alibaba set up the Amap Street Stars project in June and has since been making secret progress, covering over 1.6 million offline service providers in more than 300 Chinese cities, including over 870,000 restaurants, 230,000 hotels, and nearly 50,000 scenic spots.

Amap Street Stars is based on users' behavior trends rather than their likes or favorites, values returning customers, and will never be commercialized, said Guo Ning, chief executive of Amap.

Alibaba launches Amap Street Stars to hike its penetration rate in the local services sector, Zhang Yi, founder and chief analyst of iiMedia Research, told Yicai.

Alibaba linked the feature to Amap rather than its Taobao Flash Buy because of the former's mapping and navigation data, which Dianping does not have, according to Zhuang Shuai, founder of Bailian Consulting and an expert in the retail and e-commerce industry.

On the same day, Dianping announced it would "restore" its quality food delivery service to help Meituan amid intensifying competition in China's food delivery market and use a self-developed business-to-business AI model to analyze users' demand based on a vast amount of review data, eliminating non-genuine reviews to provide a reliable reference for decision-making. It will also issue 25 million large-denomination "quality takeout" consumption coupons.

Dianping can enhance the adhesiveness of its users and the quality of merchant resources and create a synergy effect with Meituan's takeout platform, said Chen Liteng, a digital life analyst at Wangjing She's e-commerce research center.

The effect of Dianping's new project remains to be seen because its users tend to dine in, while restoring the food delivery business requires guiding users to order food on the app, Zhuang pointed out.

Meituan "suffered grievously" in the last round of the food delivery war with JD.Com and Alibaba's Ele.me. Its net profit plunged 89 percent to CNY1.5 billion (USD209.2 million) in the six months ended June 30 from a year earlier, while its revenue rose 12 percent to CNY91.8 billion (USD12.9 billion), it said in its first-half financial report released on Aug. 27.

Shares of Alibaba [HKG: 9988] rose 1.8 percent to HKD145.30 (USD18.66) apiece as of 2.30 p.m. today, while Meituan [HKG: 3690] tumbled 4.9 percent to HKD96.75 (USD12.42). Alibaba's New York-listed stock [NYSE: BABA] closed 2.2 percent lower at USD143.93 yesterday.

Editor: Martin Kadiev