WeChat AI Opens a Narrow Door for Smartphone Makers | Focus Analysis

Text | Wang Yuchan, Liang Jianqiang

Editor | Zhang Yuxin

Yesterday, Tencent Customer Service responded that WeChat is collaborating with mobile phone manufacturers such as Huawei, Xiaomi, Honor, OPPO, and vivo to launch the A2A assistant capability. Currently, multiple manufacturers have completed the integration.

"You can initiate WeChat audio and video calls or send messages to specified friends through the AI assistant of the corresponding mobile phone system. This function is based on the A2A (Agent-to-Agent) collaboration mechanism, and data security and privacy are guaranteed by a dual authorization mechanism. The cooperation aims to integrate WeChat's high-frequency communication functions into the mobile phone system assistant to provide you with a more convenient user experience." Tencent Customer Service said.

Compared with the Doubao mobile phone launched by ByteDance before, Tencent's WeChat AI has taken a completely different technical path.

Many OS-side AI assistants, represented by the Doubao mobile phone, follow the GUI agent (Graphical User Interface Agent) route - they identify the interface by "reading the screen" like a human being and then operate WeChat through "simulated clicks".

However, Tencent's cooperation with mobile phone manufacturers this time adopts the A2A (Agent-to-Agent) mechanism - WeChat opens a door to allow the system agents of mobile phone manufacturers (such as Huawei Xiaoyi, Xiaomi Xiaoai, Honor YOYO, vivo V, Meizu Aicy) to directly communicate with the agents inside WeChat.

After the system agent analyzes the user's "intention", it sends instructions to WeChat through an encrypted and controlled protocol, and WeChat "executes itself" in the background and returns the result.

In essence, this is a "dual authorization", that is, user authorization + application authorization.

Two Technical Paths, One Ethical Issue

At Tencent's Q1 earnings conference call in May, an analyst asked Tencent President Liu Chiping, "How do you view the long-term potential or potential disruption from operating system-level agents, including those from iOS, Android, or mobile phone manufacturers?"

Liu Chiping replied:

From the perspective of the operating system, there are several different things mixed in here. There are real operating systems, such as iOS and Android, and then there are those applications that try to pretend to be operating systems.

I think that if you are an operating system like iOS or Android, you want to ensure that the ecosystem is well protected and carefully planned, and give applications reasonable permissions. You can have an agent that tries to provide services for users, but you need to obtain the permission of different applications.

Otherwise, as an operating system, you are essentially plundering different applications, which is not the best way to manage an operating system. Operating systems have been around for a long time, and its principle is neutral, providing a fair competitive environment for all applications.

In the future, all agents can cooperate with the operating system. But if an application tries to become a service similar to an operating system and tries to invade other applications, that is real competition, and no application will allow this to happen. I think the operating system itself should also prevent this from happening.

Now it seems that Liu Chiping's meaning is very clear - it is okay to use the agent of the operating system to control the application, but the authorization of the application cannot be obtained without permission, otherwise it is plundering the application.

In other words, Tencent cannot accept the GUI agent, only the A2A.

Mobile phone manufacturers have not tried to break in with the GUI.

From 2023 to 2024, at the beginning of the explosion of large models, mobile phone manufacturers were once keen on "fully autonomous driving" attempts. Honor YOYO promoted "sending a WeChat red envelope/ordering takeout with one sentence", and the selling point of Xiaomi's smart home products was "Xiaomi Xiaoai automatically making a WeChat call".

At that time, the manufacturers' approach was to use system-level macro commands (Macro) or GUI automation tools. When you say to your phone, "Send a 10-yuan red envelope to XX", what the AI assistant executes in the background is: "Unlock -> Click the WeChat icon -> Search for XX -> Click the plus sign -> Click the red envelope -> Enter 10 -> Initiate payment".

This behavior was quickly blocked by WeChat.

In April 2025, the WeChat Security Center issued an announcement saying: "Recently, we have found that some third-party tools, in the name of 'AI managing users' WeChat chat records', bypass WeChat's security technical measures and illegally obtain or use the data of WeChat terminal users. Here, we remind users not to install or use any third-party tools that can access local chat records."

Subsequently, these system-level AI agents could no longer directly call WeChat functions and returned to small tasks such as testing smoothness, adjusting screen brightness, and connecting to Wi-Fi.

Although mobile phone manufacturers have been trying to find a workaround through "system accessibility assistance", once WeChat updates its interface UI or modifies the ID of a control, the manufacturers' AI assistants will encounter embarrassing situations such as clicking on the wrong person or button, and the experience is very unstable.

What really touched the bottom line of various Internet companies was the Doubao mobile phone.

Screenshot of the introduction page of the Doubao mobile phone assistant

On December 1, 2025, ByteDance and ZTE jointly released a technical preview version of the Doubao mobile phone assistant. Equipped with the Nubia M153 engineering prototype, the core selling point of the system-level AI agent is "AI direct cross-application operation".

This product was also blocked by the application provider. In December, a large number of users reported that their WeChat accounts were forcibly logged out, and the system prompted that the login environment was abnormal. At the same time, applications such as Taobao, Alipay, Agricultural Bank of China, and China Construction Bank also began to restrict relevant capabilities.

Tencent said that this was because the Doubao mobile phone assistant simulated user operations through system-level permissions (such as INJECT_EVENTS), triggering WeChat's existing security risk control strategy and being judged to violate the provisions of the "Tencent WeChat Software License and Service Agreement" that prohibit third-party plug-ins and automated operations.

Now, WeChat AI is on the verge of launch, and it's time for the "barbarians" to transform into "cooperators". The A2A mechanism allows WeChat to provide a security protocol, and the two sides' AIs officially "shake hands and negotiate". The power to open and close the door still lies in Tencent's hands.

WeChat AI with Millions of Mini Programs Faces Alibaba's "All-in-One Package" and ByteDance's Volcengine

On June 2nd, the British "Financial Times" quoted the statements of two people familiar with the matter, saying that Tencent has currently completed the prototype test of this AI agent and will start the compliance approval process required for public launch as soon as this month.

After the report was released, Tencent's stock rose 10.5% at the close of trading that day, setting a record for the highest single-day increase since January 25, 2021.

The "Financial Times" said that a person who had seen the early demonstration revealed that users can access the chat box of the artificial intelligence agent by swiping right on the WeChat home screen. Users can enter instructions to let the agent automatically access millions of WeChat mini-programs and complete tasks such as finding cafes and ordering drinks according to specific taste and price requirements.

In the AI era, the strategies of various big manufacturers are very different, but basically they all focus on magnifying their most advantageous points.

Alibaba's Qianwen APP has connected dozens of agents in the Alibaba ecosystem, such as maps, taxi-hailing, shopping, and flash sales, and is open to third-party agents and Skills, allowing enterprises to operate their own Agents on the platform, becoming a veritable "all-in-one package".

In addition to having a stronger Doubao agent than Yuanbao and a stronger Doubao large model than Hunyuan, ByteDance also has a cooperation relationship with mobile phone manufacturers in advance - currently, 9 out of the top 10 mobile phone manufacturers in the world (except Apple) have connected to the Doubao large model through Volcengine, and Volcengine has almost monopolized the domestic mobile phone ecosystem.

At present, Tencent's greatest advantage is obviously still having the only real "super app" in China, WeChat.

A Tencent insider commented on the cooperation with mobile phone manufacturers, saying: "Any mobile phone agent that cannot call WeChat is not a real system-level agent. Tencent will definitely open this door, it's just a matter of time."

In terms of the relationship with the Hardcore Alliance, although mobile phone manufacturers have to pay computing power fees to service platforms such as Volcengine at the underlying level, they are also very clear that at the application level, users can change their mobile phones, but they will never stop using WeChat.

The mobile phone that can "initiate a WeChat call with one sentence blindly" will have an absolute experience advantage in the high-end market. The cooperation with Tencent is something that "can be waited for, but cannot be ignored".

Tencent's A2A cooperation with mobile phone manufacturers has opened a hole in the "Berlin Wall" between the Hardcore Alliance and application providers, balancing the interests of both sides. In the future, we should also be able to see more Alibaba and ByteDance applications truly connect to the system agent through this path.