WeChat tests AI photo editing as Xiaowei enters chat

Images in chat windows are starting to offer a new way to be edited. WeChat is conducting a limited rollout of “AI photo editing.” Users can tap “AI processing” on the image preview page to open a Xiaowei dialog and access 3 categories and 11 features, including beautification, filters, text translation, automatic redaction and super-resolution. The button does not take users to another app; the editing happens within the chat flow they were already using.

爱范儿’s testing shows that Xiaowei performs reasonably well on editing tasks such as skin smoothing, image expansion, aspect-ratio adjustment and object removal. Imperfections remain visible, but it is already sufficient for lightweight needs such as editing an image while chatting. It is more like a handy tool than a full-fledged workstation intended to replace professional photo-editing software.

The gap becomes apparent when repainting or generating new content. Users need to describe more clearly what they want, and prompt quality directly affects the results. By directly asking Xiaowei, 爱范儿 learned that it currently uses a WeChat-customized WeLM model, most likely the WeLM-80B version previously launched in chats and mini programs. This assessment is not confirmation of the model version officially announced by WeChat.

Xiaowei’s design focus may not be on becoming a prominent standalone entry point. WeChat is trying to integrate Xiaowei into existing features rather than first building an independent AI app. Tencent has disclosed that the WeChat team focused on WeChat-specific scenarios and inference efficiency when customizing WeLM. The publicly disclosed WeLM-HD4-80B and WeLM-HD4-617B have total parameter counts of 80 billion and 617 billion, respectively, but only 3 billion and 23 billion active parameters. As of June this year, the combined monthly active users of WeChat and WeChat reached 1.439 billion. At this scale, every model inference has to contend with a real computing bill. Tencent’s latest quarterly capital expenditure reached 52.8 billion yuan, up 176% year over year, while free cash flow turned negative at 13.8 billion yuan; Tencent said this infrastructure is supporting the training and inference of models, WorkBuddy, CodeBuddy and WeChat AI projects.

Specifically, what users can get now is more convenient lightweight image editing, not high-quality generation completed in a single step. WeChat’s value lies in putting Xiaowei into the image, search and content scenarios people already use every day, lowering the barrier to trying AI. The trade-off is that the results still need refinement, while cost pressures are already showing up in the financial data. Tencent’s latest quarterly Non-IFRS operating profit was 75.6 billion yuan, or 86.1 billion yuan excluding the impact of AI products including Yuanbao, WorkBuddy, CodeBuddy and Xiaowei. By Tencent’s own calculation, the new AI products currently reduced operating profit by approximately 10.5 billion yuan in the quarter. WeChat’s latest limited rollout offers a glimpse of how a small feature can become an entry point to large-scale AI infrastructure.