Taobao and Tmall Group transforms digital shopping experience with AI

Alibaba Group’s core eCommerce division Taobao and Tmall Group (TTG) is leveraging various AI features to transform the digital shopping experience while boosting operating efficiency for merchants.

The series of AI-powered tools ranges from personalised consumer-facing chatbots to visual generation applications for merchants.

This aligns with the three core strategies put forward by Alibaba Group CEO Eddie Wu in November last year: “To put users first, build an ecosystem for brands and merchants to thrive on our platform, and realise AI technology-driven innovation.”

As part of the AI tools, “Wenwen”(问问), a LLM-powered generative AI application launched in beta form in September 2023, is embedded within the Taobao app. It is the first full integration of AI into a user application for eCommerce in China.

Through question-and-answer interactions, the AI-powered shopping assistant generates detailed product recommendations along with further questions to guide consumer purchasing decisions and includes multi-media content such as short videos and livestreams. Consumers can use "Wenwen" to summarise the pros and cons of similar products, and generate purchase recommendations.

Furthermore, Taobao and Tmall rolled out ten AI tools and made them available to all merchants in 2024 to improve merchant operating efficiency.

These AI tools include generative AI applications to create images and marketing content, customer service chatbots, and AI-based business analytics. They were used more than 1.5 billion times during 11.11 last year, according to the release.

Don't miss: Alibaba's Taobao and Tmall Group simplifies shopping experience for 6.18 campaign

Ahead of this year’s 6.18 Mid-Year Shopping Festival, Taobao and Tmall expanded its suite of AI tools to make customer service chatbot Ali Xiaomi and market insight monitor Business Advisor freely accessible to merchants.

The chatbot Ali Xiaomi, also known as Ali Assistant, is a Qwen-powered chatbot that allows merchants to provide a superior customer service experience around the clock and respond to a wide variety of inquiries and requests.

Ali Xiaomi aims to help small and medium-sized merchants tackle issues such as insufficient customer service staff, limited service hours, and inconsistent quality of service.

On the other hand, the market insight monitor Business Advisor helps merchants capture new opportunities to grow their business by leveraging consumer demand insights and industry and competitor analysis.

Business Advisor’s simple user interface and robust AI-driven analytics equip merchants with the information they need to make real-time adjustments to optimise critical areas of their business, such as product assortment. 

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