Alibaba.com, a global businessto-business (B2B) e-commerce platform, is looking to transform the search experience for buyers with the introduction of a new AI-powered conversational search engine that is expected to make it quicker and easier for small and medium-sized businesses to source products from suppliers around the globe. It should also level the playing field for smaller suppliers that might not have the resources to boost their rankings on passive search engines. Due to be introduced in the UK and EMEA in September, Alibaba. com’s AI Sourcing Agent provides a more proactive experience by enabling users to describe their sourcing requirements in conversational language (or complex queries and even entire documents). It will then accurately match those needs with products and suppliers from across the internet, instead of relying on the The road to success simple rankings and indexing used by traditional search engines. To aid decision-making, the AI engine will offer suggestions and present product information in customised tables so that buyers can quickly view side-by-side comparisons of products from multiple suppliers. The conversational search function is just one aspect of a solution that Alibaba.com says will ‘mimic the experience of having a sourcing professional by your side’. It also draws on expertise the e-commerce specialist has gained in payments, logistics, customs and currency exchange since it was established in 1999. Today, 25 years later, the platform has 200,000 suppliers globally and 48 million SME buyers. There are 200 million products available on the platform and in 2023 the gross value of merchandise traded was $50 billion. As Alex Yee was heading for Olympic Gold in the Triathlon, Alibaba.com was on the Champs-Elysées launching a new AI search tool and a new programme to help athletes become entrepreneurs businessinfomag.uk magazine 20 E-COMMERCE From left to right: Michelle Lau, Managing Director, Alibaba.com, France; Emma Terhoe, Chair of the IOC Athletes’ Commission; Tony Parker, former Olympian athlete and Alibaba. com ambassador; Kuo Zhang, President, Alibaba.com; Chris Tung, President, Strategic Development Department, Alibaba Group; Kaveh Mehrabi, Director of the Athletes’ Department at the International Olympic Committee; Simona Galik Moore, former professional tennis player and Alibaba.com ambassador. Doing more with AI The launch of the AI Sourcing Agent follows Alibaba Group’s introduction, last November, of a Generative AI Toolkit under the brand name Aidge. This is already being used by about 500,000 e-commerce merchants, and since its launch the average number of daily application programming interface (API) calls has doubled every two months and now exceeds 50 million. Merchants are using the toolkit to bring greater efficiency to numerous tasks and processes, from product listings and marketing to customer service and process automation. Applications extend from basic image and text generation and translation (so far more than 100 million product listings on Alibaba International’s platforms have been translated into multiple languages with the help of AI) to more sophisticated deployments in customer service, where the ability of AI to deliver informed responses to customer queries 24/7 can help boost sales. Alibaba itself is using AI to safeguard merchants from financial loss caused by chargebacks initiated by customers. In a recent pilot, Alibaba International’s Chargeback Agent increased merchants’ chargeback defence success rate by an average of 15% by generating dispute letters on the merchants’ behalf, drawing upon order information such as payment and logistics details. Alibaba is now in the process of launching an AI Refund Agent, providing both merchants and consumers with a more flexible refund solution designed to optimise customer satisfaction and reduce merchant costs. The automated tool processes the reasons behind an e-commerce transaction dispute and verifies evidence to calculate refund amounts. Alibaba is using AI to lower merchants’ costs in other ways too. Its virtual try-on feature, for example, provides a costeffective alternative to model photoshoots by allowing clothing suppliers to upload an image of an item of clothing for display on a broad selection of virtual models. www.aidc-ai.com
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