Double Eleven and AI ＂marriage＂： a new password to activate the second spring of e-commerce？

Text/Technology Talk

This year’s Double Eleven is coming to an end, but the situation is quite different from previous years.

Not to mention the overall sales level and too many recipes, this year’s double promotion of the 11th National Congress of the Communist Party of China is destined to be uneventful. The head of the live streaming host is controversial, and the small and medium-sized live streaming hosts have begun to show their superpowers; originally belonging to Ali and JD.com’s "two people turn", Douyin, Pinduoduo and other heavy players have made the situation even more chaotic…

Under the surging undercurrent, there is also a pair of mysterious big hands playing an important role, that is, AI. It is concentrated in the fact that AI no longer only plays a role in a certain node of e-commerce, but is deeply integrated into the entire industrial chain. And this may be the new password for AI to activate the second spring of e-commerce.

Integration into the industrial chain: AI shows new magic

The high emphasis on AI is evident in the various performances of e-commerce platforms.

In a 20-minute speech at the 2023 Tmall Double Eleven conference, Dai Shan, CEO of Taotian Group, mentioned AI 20 times, "Taobao is a product of the last Internet technology revolution, and will also seize the next AI revolution." She said Taobao is gradually starting to test the waters of intelligence: "This year’s Double Eleven, we have prepared more than 10 AI tools for merchants to use."

JD.com also did not show weakness, and made the magic of AI stand out by equipping the entire line with intelligent customer service "Jing Xiaozhi". According to JD.com data, after 10 minutes of sale, JD.com cloud intelligent customer service has accumulated more than 1.88 million consulting services.

In addition, other Internet technology companies are also trying to get a share of the pie through AI. For example, Tencent Advertising uses the Huanyuan model to support intelligent advertising production; Baidu APP launches Baidu’s preferred intelligent assistant "Xiaoyou", which acts as an intelligent shopping assistant for consumers and provides "Double Eleven Calendar" presented on all major platforms; Xiaohongshu also announced an AI intelligent note assistant to help merchants achieve one-click release of product notes.

If you look at the role of AI in Double Eleven, it is throughout – integrated into the entire e-commerce industry chain, playing an important role at every node. This is mainly due to the development of AI models, allowing AIGC’s massive tools to present infinite possibilities.

AIGC tools represented by ChatGPT continue to break through in language understanding, text creation, picture recognition, creative painting, etc., which are highly compatible with the development elements of the e-commerce industry and can empower the industry at all stages. Specifically, AIGC can assume important responsibilities in product development, marketing, after-sales and other stages.

In the product development stage, AIGC can provide design inspiration, customize product descriptions and drawings according to requirements, and analyze factors such as product prices and target groups based on market information, and provide optimization suggestions and solutions.

In the product marketing stage, AIGC can help e-commerce companies reduce costs and increase efficiency in the production of marketing content, achieve accurate product recommendations, and promote innovation and upgrading in the form of live streaming.

In the after-sales stage of products, AIGC can assume customer service functions and can also be applied to order management links such as warehousing, delivery, and logistics to help e-commerce platforms further reduce costs and increase efficiency.

Overall, AI-based AIGC can achieve all-round coverage in e-commerce scenarios such as optimizing product selection decisions, intelligent customer service work, graphic material production, intelligent advertising, accurate associated recommendation, and processing image materials. Taking marketing as an example, AIGC can deeply tap the creative potential and generate multi-modal personalized social media marketing content such as text, pictures, and videos according to the platform, product characteristics, and target audience, saving creative time and creative costs, and improving the pertinence and attractiveness of marketing content.

It can be said that AI continues to empower in the field of e-commerce to reduce costs and increase efficiency, covering multiple application scenarios, which can basically run through every link of the e-commerce industry and bring further experience improvement.

AI deeply empowers and ignites the upward engine of e-commerce

The in-depth exploration of AI is the unremitting pursuit of e-commerce platforms and players.

As early as this year’s 618 period, e-commerce platforms and brands have used AI technology in the process of big promotion. For example, Taobao and Tmall launched the "AI Eco-Partner Program" to apply AI in store opening and decoration, product image creativity, marketing planning and promotion, content organization and creation, etc., to provide merchants with intelligent generative services in the fields of content, data and customer service.

From some achievements, nearly 500,000 merchants use Alimama AI video tools "mixed cut" and "painted cut" to send more than 2.50 million short videos; AI image-text tools "intelligent pictures" and "intelligent copy" to output nearly 10 million marketing graphics.

JD.com AI digital people help the transaction of goods, Client Server – JD.com Cloud launched the "Free Digital People Live Room Call" plan, and created "AI live streaming host" and "digital doppelganger" for some JD.com stores during the promotion period. According to JD.com’s battle report, during the 618 period of this year, the number of go LIVE merchants increased by more than 5 times compared with last year’s Double Eleven, helping to achieve a 246% increase in turnover compared with last year’s Double Eleven, and the cumulative consulting service volume of JD.com Cloud Yanxi intelligent customer service exceeded 700 million times.

It is worth noting that at the 2023 JD.com Global Science and Technology Explorer Conference and JD.com Cloud Summit "JD.com Technology Practice" sub-forum held on July 13 this year, the JD.com retail future brand AI RETAIL was also released. The main goal is to upgrade retail people, goods and markets based on JD.com’s AI technology capabilities. JD.com officially released a large-scale model with a parameter scale of 100 billion, focusing on retail, logistics and other industries.

At the 2023 Hangzhou Yunqi Conference held on October 31, Alibaba Cloud announced a full-stack upgrade of AI cloud computing, releasing Tongyi Qianwen 2.0 and 8 major industry models with a scale of 100 billion parameters. Many of Alibaba’s businesses are based on AI big model technology to innovate business scenarios and service models, and build future-oriented imagination.

The China Gold Research Report said that considering that the e-commerce scene is a key direction for AI to be implemented on the B-end, and Alibaba has the advantages of computing power, models, data and scenarios, it has strong confidence in the implementation of AI applications on Taobao and Tmall.

The e-commerce giant up the ante AI represented by Alibaba and Tmall is to value the strength of the latter’s deep empowerment and ignite its own upward engine. This is because AI can fully empower e-commerce and improve efficiency and quality significantly.

From the perspective of "people and freight yard", AI can empower e-commerce in all aspects, such as virtual live streaming hosting, intelligent product selection, virtual try-on, logistics performance, etc. From the perspective of e-commerce operation, AI can empower e-commerce in the full link, that is, from pre-sale product selection pricing, in-sale marketing recommendation, AI shopping guide, after-sales intelligent customer service, logistics performance, etc., to improve the quality and efficiency of the e-commerce industry.

This also means that AI is expected to improve the efficiency of e-commerce. It can optimize its conversion rate and repurchase rate while reducing costs, promote the quality and efficiency of the e-commerce industry, and make the industry develop steadily and healthily, or even achieve huge breakthroughs.

New inflection point! E-commerce will completely break through the shackles

Under the influence of AI, the e-commerce industry is approaching a new turning point and entering a new stage of development, which is expected to open up new growth space.

Without a doubt, the e-commerce industry will become an important showcase for AI in the future. With the continuous iteration of AI models, the technical reserves are more sufficient, and a variety of applications can be implemented, and the scenarios are richer.

From a technical point of view, taking ChatGPT as an example, it has launched multi-modal functions and introduced voice and image interaction capabilities. Taking ERNIE Bot as an example in China, it has been updated to version 4.0 after several rounds of iterations. According to Li Yanhong, the latest version 4.0 model is "comparable to GPT-4" in general capabilities.

From this perspective, the iterative upgrade of AI models can support the improvement of the actual effect of AI-related tools and applications, and naturally provide better performance and experience for the e-commerce industry.

Let’s take the C-end and B-end scenarios as examples to briefly list several practical cases where AI can help the e-commerce industry break free.

Facing the C-end, AI shopping guide and AI display content generation are particularly outstanding. Many overseas and domestic e-commerce platforms have launched AI shopping guide functions – understanding users’ vague needs through text interaction, and recommending specific products to them, ultimately improving the product turnover rate.

AI display content production is based on text comments, image effects, videos, 3D renderings, etc. to form a rich presentation effect, including AI try-on, AI home decoration renderings and other interesting and practical functions, with the ultimate goal of optimizing the shopping experience and improving the order conversion rate.

For the B-end, AI is mainly to improve the efficiency of marketing and store operations, and to reduce costs, improve quality and increase efficiency for sellers. For example, AI can easily realize online store management, providing sellers with intelligent product release and management, market analysis, customer reception, enterprise management and other functions, which is convenient for product management and customer management.

This year marks the 15th year of the 11th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, and the first Double Eleven of the first large-scale application of AI in the e-commerce industry. It is very certain that the powerful capabilities of AI will revolutionize the way consumers interact with e-commerce platforms, as well as the operating models of platforms and merchants.

And with this as a key development time node, with the strong support of AI, the e-commerce industry will be completely broken and reborn.