<div id="readability-page-1">In an intensifying giveaway war among artificial intelligence apps in China, TikTok parent ByteDance’s Doubao chatbot has joined the fray to offer robots and drones, following multibillion-yuan campaigns from Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Holdings to hand out cash and bubble tea. ByteDance said on Tuesday that it planned to give more than 100,000 tech products as gifts, as well as red packets of up to 8,888 yuan (US$1,284), through lucky draws on the Doubao app on the eve of Lunar New Year. These gifts, ranging from Unitree robots and DJI drones to electric vehicles from Audi and Mercedes-Benz, would be linked to Doubao’s large language model, according to ByteDance. The Beijing-based firm said the winners of the Unitree robots and the EVs would get the rights to use them instead of owning them outright.  ByteDance’s move has ramped up a high-stakes battle among Chinese Big Tech companies, including Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu, to acquire users for their AI apps during the Spring Festival, pouring billions of yuan in cash prizes and gifts. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post. Alibaba’s 3 billion yuan campaign started last Friday, offering freebies including bubble tea through its Qwen AI app. More than 10 million free orders – worth 250 million yuan – were placed within nine hours, with vouchers capped at 25 yuan each through Qwen. That led to a surge in Qwen downloads on Friday, pushing the app past Tencent’s Yuanbao to the top of China’s Apple App Store, up from 10th place a day earlier. On February 1, Tencent committed 1 billion yuan to its digital red packet giveaway campaign, while Baidu initiated its own red packet campaign on its app and AI assistant Wenxin, offering 500 million yuan. Apart from the prizes, ByteDance’s cloud unit Volcano Engine has secured an “exclusive AI cloud partnership” with the Spring Festival Gala, mainland China’s most-watched annual television event, for exposure and reach during the holiday. Doubao remained the mainland’s top consumer AI app in December, with 155 million weekly active users in the second week last month, according to data from QuestMobile. It was followed by DeepSeek, Tencent’s Yuanbao, Ant Group’s Ant A-Fu and Alibaba’s Qwen.</div>

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<p>In a competitive giveaway battle among AI apps in China, ByteDance's Doubao chatbot is offering over 100,000 tech products, including robots and drones, as well as cash prizes up to 8,888 yuan. This initiative follows similar campaigns by Alibaba and Tencent, who have also launched substantial giveaways to attract users during the Spring Festival. ByteDance's Doubao app, which had 155 million weekly active users in December, aims to maintain its lead in the market amid these high-stakes promotions.</p>

ByteDance joins Chinese rivals offering freebies in bid to acquire AI app users