Author HubMaximilian Schreiner
Alibaba’s Quark AI Assistant became the most used AI app in China in March, according to data from Aicpb.com. The app reached approximately 150 million monthly active users worldwide, overtaking ByteDance’s Doubao, which had 100 million, and DeepSeek with 77 million. These figures are based on App Store data and do not include website usage. Quark’s rise follows its recent transformation from a cloud storage and search service into an AI assistant. The update, introduced last month, is powered by Alibaba’s Qwen models. The app now supports a range of AI functions, including text and image generation, research assistance, and programming tasks. Other major Chinese tech firms are also expanding their AI offerings. ByteDance is currently testing new video features for Doubao, while Tencent has integrated its Yuanbao assistant into WeChat. A global ranking by Andreessen Horowitz recently placed Quark sixth among the world’s most popular AI apps, behind Baidu’s AI Search and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which remains in the top position.
OpenAI plans to remove its GPT-4 language model from ChatGPT on April 30, according to a recent changelog announcement. The company will replace it entirely with GPT-4o, which OpenAI says performs better than the original model across writing, programming, and STEM tasks. While GPT-4 will disappear from ChatGPT, developers can still access it through OpenAI's API. The 2023 model, which CEO Sam Altman indicated cost over $100 million to develop, remains at the center of several ongoing copyright disputes, including a lawsuit from the New York Times.
OpenAI has introduced a new initiative called the "Pioneers Program" aimed at developing AI benchmarks tailored to specific industries. The company says the goal is to create evaluation methods that better reflect real-world use cases in areas such as law, finance, and healthcare—domains where existing benchmarks fall short. According to OpenAI, current AI benchmarks are often flawed. They tend to measure tasks that are difficult to interpret or overly susceptible to manipulation—criticisms that have also been directed at OpenAI itself. As reported previously, the company has faced scrutiny over its involvement in funding and promoting a prominent math evaluation dataset. In the coming months, OpenAI plans to collaborate with multiple companies to build domain-specific evaluation tools. These benchmarks will eventually be released publicly. The first cohort includes select startups focused on practical AI applications. Participating companies will also have the opportunity to work with OpenAI on improving model performance via reinforcement fine-tuning, a method the company recently introduced for customizing expert-level language models.