Ant Group today announced the launch of LingGuang 2.0, an upgrade that transforms its multimodal AI assistant into a proactive personal agent capable of identifying user needs and managing tasks over time. Moving beyond passive, single-turn interactions, LingGuang 2.0 shifts AI assistance from responding to commands toward continuously identifying needs, following up on tasks, and coordinating everyday affairs on behalf of users.

Unlike conventional conversational AI and task-oriented agents, LingGuang 2.0 moves the starting point of AI assistance earlier in the user’s workflow. Instead of waiting for users to issue a command, LingGuang can, with explicit user authorization, draw on connected information and services to spot potential needs, initiate analysis and follow-ups, and alert users when their attention is required. In this way, it evolves from a reactive tool into a personal agent that continuously manages tasks on the user’s behalf.

This shift is powered by comprehensive upgrades to cross-session memory, long-horizon task scheduling, and tool-calling capabilities. Running on independent cloud instances, LingGuang can continue executing tasks beyond a single conversation session, dynamically following up as new information and status changes arise. This enables a transition from one-off task execution to sustained, long-term task management.

LingGuang's task management capabilities are already being applied across everyday scenarios. With user authorization to access Alipay, LingGuang can review spending records, identify potentially forgotten auto-renewing subscriptions, analyze spending patterns, and offer savings recommendations. After flight or hotel bookings are completed, LingGuang continues to monitor price fluctuations and notifies users when lower prices become available.

From pet care to family birthdays and vehicle inspections, LingGuang identifies key milestones and arranges follow-ups within the scope of user authorization, reducing the burden of repeated checking and manual scheduling.

The evolution from single-task completion to proactive understanding and continuous follow-through marks a pivotal shift for AI agents from "task executors" to "task managers." Achieving this requires more than model comprehension and reasoning; it demands cross-application information access, tool invocation, and computing infrastructure capable of stable, long-duration operation.

LingGuang 2.0 not only integrates data and services within the Alipay ecosystem but also supports calling tools such as MCP and CLI in open environments, extending cross-platform collaboration capabilities. Currently, LingGuang comes with built-in capabilities for Alipay billing, membership, and travel services, as well as email, DingTalk, Lark and Mi Home. Its management scope is expanding from personal information and online tasks to cross-platform workflows and smart home device control.

As permission boundaries, data security, and execution trustworthiness become critical challenges for personal agents, LingGuang 2.0 integrates Ant Group's APASS, a unified account and security management service for the AI era across agents, devices, applications, and services. APASS embeds identity authentication, intent safety, and privacy protection into the agent execution process. Through mechanisms such as separating authorization keys from agents and holding them in escrow, it enables agents to execute tasks without directly accessing credentials. Users can review, adjust, or revoke authorizations at any time, ensuring agents operate strictly within authorized boundaries.

Launched in November 2025, LingGuang is a multimodal general AI assistant from Ant Group and the first of its kind in China that interacts with users through code-driven multimodal outputs. The app surpassed 2 million downloads within its first six days. Previously, LingGuang introduced features such as “generating Flash Apps from a single prompt” and “world generation using world models,” extending natural language interaction into application generation and multimodal content creation, and pioneering a new paradigm for AI assistant interaction.

LingGuang 2.0 is now rolling out in China on iOS, Android, and the LingGuang.com. Users can download the app or visit the website to get started.

About Ant Group

Ant Group is a global digital technology provider and the operator of Alipay, a leading internet services platform in China, connecting over one billion users to more than 10,000 types of consumer services from partners. Through innovative products and solutions powered by AI, blockchain and other technologies, Ant Group supports partners across industries to thrive through digital transformation in an ecosystem for inclusive and sustainable development. For more information, visit www.antgroup.com.