(Yicai) Jan. 27 -- Pony Ma, founder, chairman, and chief executive of Tencent Holdings, gave an outline of the Chinese internet giant's artificial intelligence strategy, in addition to expressing admiration for rival Alibaba Group Holding's internal integration of AI assistant Qwen and strongly opposing ByteDance's use of Doubao in AI phones' operating systems.

Tencent will consider large language models and AI products in an integrated manner, adopting cross-functional teams, embedded personnel, and co-design logic for future product and organizational design, Ma said during Tencent's recent annual employee meeting.

Alibaba's efforts to deeply integrate Qwen across its ecosystem are "commendable," with its internal coordination making sense, Ma noted. However, the downside is that an AI suite bundled may not be what everyone wants, he added.

Regarding Doubao's model of integrating at the OS level to help users execute operations on their phones, Ma called the approach of using overlay methods to record users' phone and computer screens and transmit them to the cloud "extremely unsafe and irresponsible." Tencent "unequivocally opposes" this, he stressed.

WeChat's AI integration "appears relatively slow," because Tencent's instant messaging app will not create a centralized AI entry point but will maintain a decentralized approach, allowing users to define when and where AI activates, he said. The Shenzhen-based company will continue the decentralized strategy to balance user needs with privacy and security when planning the app's intelligent ecosystem, he added.

WeChat should develop according to its own characteristics rather than rushing to copy whatever others are doing, Ma noted.

With so many users already on WeChat, it's never too late to develop AI, but this needs long-term investment, according to Allen Zhang, founder of the app.

After Chief AI Scientist Yao Shunyu joined Tencent, the company accelerated recruitment of AI-native talent to restructure its research and development team and strengthen synergy between the Hunyuan LLM and Yuanbao AI assistant, Ma pointed out. AI is a major business where the firm has focused investment, he stressed.

On Jan. 25, Yuanbao announced a CNY1 billion (USD143.7 million) giveaway campaign for the upcoming Chinese New Year.

Regarding other businesses, Ma confirmed that the cloud business has achieved profitability at scale, while the gaming business is "almost scarily strong" this year. Overseas gaming revenue exceeded USD10 billion last year, accounting for over 30 percent of the total gaming revenue, thanks to strategic investments, co-development tie-ups, and self-developed titles going global, he said.

The Cloud and Smart Industries Group has "fully turned around," with revenue exceeding CNY37 billion (USD5.3 billion) last year and gross margins above 30 percent, a Tencent executive pointed out.

Tencent's exit rate for junior, middle, and senior management was 11.4 percent over the past year, another executive noted.

Editor: Martin Kadiev