BEIJING – If you are looking for evidence of how enthusiastically China is adopting AI, look no further than the country’s premier month-long Singles Day shopping festival.
Shopping via chatbots that recommend, direct and complete purchases is on the rise, AI-enabled devices such as toys and robots are being heavily promoted and consumers are snapping up bundles of AI tokens – units of computing that people buy to use AI models.
For e-commerce firms such as Alibaba, JD.com and PDD Holdings, artificial intelligence has offered a new way to keep cautious consumers engaged amid fierce competition.
For example, Alibaba platforms – Tmall for established brands and Taobao for a wider range of merchants – offer AI-driven research, virtual try-ons of clothing and tools to help users find discounts.
On short video and social commerce platform Douyin, AI drove roughly 5% of purchases through chatbot links in October, according to data from WPIC Marketing + Technologies. For considered purchases such as supplements, that share exceeded 20%.
“This is still a very new gateway and discovery channel,” Jacob Cooke, chief executive of the research firm, said. “I expect it to account for a growing share of direct purchases, comparable to livestreaming or social commerce.”
Whether AI has excited consumers sufficiently to boost overall spending, however, remains to be seen.
