Blog/Clienteling/WeChat and WeCom Integrating DeepSeek: What Brands Need to Know
Generative AI (GenAI) is revolutionizing the future of businesses across industries. By automating repetitive tasks, improving decision-making, and personalizing user experiences, it empowers brands to drive innovation at an unprecedented pace.
China is at the forefront of this shift, investing heavily in AI research and infrastructure. One of its latest breakthroughs, DeepSeek, has emerged as a powerful GenAI model, capturing global attention.
This article explores the evolution of GenAI in China and the integration of DeepSeek into WeChat and WeCom to elevate user experiences and brand interactions.
Table of Contents
- Quick Overview of GenAI in China
- What is DeepSeek?
- Tencent's Adoption of DeepSeek Across Its Ecosystem
- To Wrap Up
Quick Overview of GenAI in China
China’s digital landscape stands apart from the rest of the world, shaped by the Great Firewall and a distinct regulatory environment.
While these factors have limited the influence of Western platforms, they have simultaneously encouraged the robust growth of homegrown alternative solutions and a complex local data regulation framework.
The same dynamics have fueled the rapid rise of local GenAI solutions.
Chinese tech giants such as Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and many start-ups have heavily invested in GenAI, placing a strong emphasis on creating useful, scalable applications at remarkable speed.
These tech players’ focus on creating localized, user-centric solutions has accelerated the adoption of GenAI in China. By mid-2024, 83% of Chinese respondents had used GenAI, significantly outpacing the 65% adoption rate in the U.S. and the 54% global average.
This wide and rapid adoption of GenAI in China can be attributed to the tech giants’ focus on localized and practical use cases that are seamlessly integrated with existing ecosystems (e.g., Alibaba’s Taobao & Tmall, Tencent’s WeChat and WeCom).
The same is being observed with DeepSeek.
What is DeepSeek?
DeepSeek is a free AI-powered chatbot developed by the Chinese AI company of the same name. Launched on January 10, 2025, it has rapidly gained traction due to its ChatGPT-like capabilities, analyzing vast amounts of datasets to generate intelligent, instant responses.
With its high performance and cost-efficiency, this cutting-edge chatbot is reshaping the AI landscape, intensifying competition with industry leaders such as OpenAI, Google, and Meta. By lowering barriers to entry, it is making advanced AI tools more accessible to businesses and consumers.
Within weeks of its launch, DeepSeek was swiftly adopted by major Chinese technology firms (e.g. Huawei, Alibaba, Tencent), reinforcing its position in the rapidly evolving AI market.
Tencent, in particular, is actively exploring deeper applications of DeepSeek across its ecosystem – the WeChat super-app and the dedicated communication tool WeCom - to enhance user experiences and brand operations within its ecosystem.
WeChat and DeepSeek Integration
With over 800 million monthly active users in 2022, WeChat Search is evolving into a powerful tool within the ecosystem for brands to capture real-time, high-intent traffic.
As users are now searching while chatting, watching videos, browsing Official Accounts, or using Mini Programs, this creates opportunities for brands to reach potential customers more organically, without disrupting their digital journey.
Since 2024, WeChat has been exploring the incorporation of GenAI into its Search capabilities through the “Quick Answer” function. Utilizing Tencent’s proprietary Hunyuan model, this feature provides users with instant responses by aggregating information from content available within the WeChat ecosystem.
In Feb 2025, Tencent announced that it is testing the integration of DeepSeek’s powerful AI capabilities “Deep Thinking” into WeChat, reinforcing its position as a leader in China’s digital ecosystem.
Key Functionality: WeChat's Advanced AI Search Powered by DeepSeek
Available to selected users, DeepSeek’s "Deep Thinking" can be directly accessed through WeChat Search, delivering well-structured, contextually relevant responses along with intelligent follow-up suggestions, all within the WeChat app, eliminating the need for external tools or downloads.
A key differentiator of DeepSeek AI is its ability to aggregate information not only from the broader internet in real-time but also from WeChat’s extensive and exclusive ecosystem, including Official Account articles and seemingly also content from Channels videos and Mini Programs, providing a more comprehensive and localized search experience.
Additionally, users can seamlessly share AI-generated Q&A responses with their WeChat contacts, embedding AI-driven insights into everyday interactions.
Despite these advancements, privacy remains a core priority. Tencent has confirmed that the AI-powered search function only accesses publicly available content, ensuring that private chat histories and Moments posts remain inaccessible to the system.
While the integration of DeepSeek significantly enhances WeChat’s capabilities, it is still in its early stages, with certain limitations such as the absence of contextual memory, file uploads, and search history tracking.
For users requiring a more advanced AI-driven experience, the standalone DeepSeek app continues to offer a more comprehensive set of features.
What This Means for Brands
As Deep Thinking enters its test phase, the full integration of DeepSeek into WeChat’s ecosystem offers brands new opportunities to boost their digital presence and customer engagement.
As AI search rewards content that aligns with user intent, in order to make the most of this shift, brands should move beyond promotional messaging and focus on creating content that delivers clear, actionable value. Educational articles, FAQs, and solution-oriented narratives — particularly across Official Accounts, Channels, and Mini Programs — will be key to capturing high-intent traffic.
WeCom and DeepSeek Integration
WeCom, Tencent’s enterprise communication and clienteling platform, has long benefited from third-party GenAI tools to enhance customer relationship management.
Now, GenAI features are being natively deployed into WeCom thanks to DeepSeek and can be expected to significantly improve customer relationship management and operational efficiency.
Key Functionalities: WeCom’s Intelligent Robots and Data Summary & Analysis Powered by DeepSeek
One notable feature is the “Intelligent Robot”, allowing brands to upload internal knowledge sets and build dedicated AI-powered assistants, tailored to various departments, such as Store Assistant, IT Assistant, HR Assistant...
For Sales Associates, in particular, these intelligent assistants can provide instant responses to employee inquiries and generate personalized clienteling scripts to support client nurturing.
Another key function is the Intelligent Table - Customer Follow-Up, which helps Sales Associates by automatically generating summaries of customer profiles, including key information such as customer interests, purchase intent, and past interactions.
With these insights, the sales team can better understand customer needs, allowing for more personalized and efficient follow-ups.
In addition, with Intelligent Data Analysis, businesses can harness AI-driven analytics to gain deeper operational insights and make data-backed strategic decisions.
What This Means for Brands
WeCom clienteling’s integration with DeepSeek provides brands with practical tools to enhance both customer interaction and internal operations:
- Enhanced Customer Engagement: DeepSeek’s ability to generate tailored responses and anticipate needs allows for proactive, value-driven engagement to improve customer satisfaction and boost sales.
- Streamline Operational Efficiency: DeepSeek automates key internal processes, reducing the burden on staff by handling routine tasks such as knowledge management and customer profiling. This results in faster response times and allows employees to focus on high-impact activities.
- Informed, Data-Driven Decision Making: AI analytics provides brands with actionable insights into customer behavior, sales trends, and operational performance.
To Wrap Up
Tencent’s strategic adoption of DeepSeek across platforms like WeChat and WeCom demonstrates the growing power of AI to enhance digital ecosystems.
In the latest update, Tencent has launched its proprietary Hunyuan-T1 AI reasoning model, directly rivaling DeepSeek’s R1 in both performance and pricing. As these models continue to evolve, it remains to be seen whether Tencent will gradually shift toward full adoption of its own model or maintain the integration of both technologies within its ecosystem.
Furthermore, with the open API capabilities of platforms like WeChat and WeCom, brands will have the flexibility to incorporate third-party applications that align with their specific business goals, enabling even more customized AI-powered experiences for their employees and customers.
Looking ahead, as GenAI capabilities rapidly advance, staying ahead of the curve with GenAI adoption will be essential for brands aiming to remain competitive, efficient, and relevant in an increasingly AI-driven world.
