Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group (“Alibaba International”) has announced that around 500,000 merchants have adopted its generative artificial intelligence (AI) toolkit in more than 40 e-commerce domains. Since the launch of the toolkit last November under the name “Aidge,” the number of average daily calls to the application programming interface (API) has doubled every two months and now exceeds 50 million.
Currently, more than 100 million product listings on Alibaba International's platforms have been refined and adapted to multiple languages with the help of AI, enabling merchants to increase market reach and boost purchase conversion.
AI is increasingly important in improving merchants' operational efficiency across Alibaba International's e-commerce platforms. Collectively, these platforms have applied generative AI to more than 40 e-commerce domains, ranging from product listing refinement and marketing to customer service, design, and process automation. In each use case, generative AI has resulted in statistically significant increases in content quality, click-through rates, conversion rates, or customer satisfaction, sometimes by double digits.
AI capabilities extend beyond essential functions such as translation and text and image generation. Leveraging AI's advanced capabilities for personalization and complex problem solving, Alibaba International has applied the technology in areas such as customer service, chargeback defense, and refunds.
In the customer service arena, AI's 24/7 availability to provide instant and informed response data from product detail pages (in technical terms, Retrieval Augmented Generation or RAG) can effectively address customer queries and facilitate purchasing decisions. After implementing Alibaba International's customer service AI toolkit in June 2024, AliExpress Choice, a premium AliExpress service that offers consumers free shipping, guaranteed on-time delivery, and free returns, reported a 29% increase in pre-sale inquiry conversion rates.
Building on initial success, Alibaba International is in the process of launching an AI Refund Agent, which offers merchants and consumers a more flexible refund solution. Aiming to optimize customer satisfaction and reduce costs for merchants, this automated tool efficiently processes reasons for disputes in e-commerce transactions and verifies evidence to calculate refund amounts for merchants.
