Qianwen, an AI-driven consumer app that has become the focus of a nationwide promotion, suffered a fresh outage on February 8 as users reported they could not place orders for a “free milk tea” campaign. The app’s official social-feed account appealed for patience, saying the traffic surge had “clogged” systems and reassuring users that the free-order vouchers remain valid through February 28.
The interruption is the latest symptom of a marketing blitz that turned Qianwen into a near-instant social-media phenomenon. In recent days the app’s ability to place an order in one sentence and heavily subsidised tickets have triggered waves of traffic, long queues at participating shops and reports of orders far exceeding normal volumes. Secondary markets and social posts showing frantic attempts to secure the virtual coupons have amplified the pressure on Qianwen’s infrastructure and the merchants fulfilling orders.
Merchants and delivery platforms have felt the strain. Local outlets reported order volumes several times their usual levels, delivery drivers said pickups were frequently delayed or timed-out, and some businesses temporarily paused participation. Platform-driven promotions of this scale expose gaps between digital demand generation and the physical logistics capacity that must serve it.
The outage highlights two wider tensions in China’s fast-moving consumer-tech landscape: first, the operational challenge of scaling consumer‑facing AI services quickly and reliably; second, the governance problem around heavily discounted or virtual rights that can be resold, hoarded or otherwise distort markets. Regulators and platforms have already begun signalling stricter rules on transfer and resale of virtual benefits; incidents like this accelerate scrutiny.
For Qianwen’s operator, the immediate priority is damage control: fixing capacity bottlenecks, communicating timelines and preserving merchant partnerships that absorb much of the financial and operational burden of the promotion. For other tech firms, the episode is a cautionary tale about how powerful marketing combined with easy-to-use AI features can produce sudden, extreme load and unwelcome public-relations risk.
Longer term, the event is a real-time test of whether AI can be integrated into everyday consumer commerce without generating disruptive flash crowds. If handled well, operators can learn how to throttle offers, protect merchants and build more resilient fulfillment networks. If not, repeated outages and merchant complaints could prompt regulatory limits on runaway subsidy campaigns and a recalibration of how AI is used in mass-market promotions.