Alibaba International has announced that its generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) toolkit, Aidge, has been employed by around 500,000 merchants since its launch last year.
This suite of AI-powered tools is designed to help vendors enhance conversion rates and reduce costs by providing services such as translation, text and image generation, customer service assistance, and more.
Aidge is integrated across several Alibaba International platforms, including Lazada, AliExpress, Alibaba.com, Daraz, and Trendyol. To date, these functions have been utilized in over 100 million product listings. The number of daily application programming interface (API) calls doubled every two months, currently exceeding 50 million.
“Global commerce represents a fertile ground for generative AI applications, particularly as LLMs are enhanced for greater multilingual capabilities,” Kaifu Zhang, VP of Alibaba International, said in a statement.
According to the business group, the introduction of GenAI has led to a significant rise in content quality, click-through rates, and customer satisfaction — sometimes increasing by double digits.
For example, after integrating AI customer service in June, AliExpress’ Choice premium service experienced a 29% boost in conversion rates from pre-sales inquiries. A pilot of the AI-powered Chargeback Agent service, which assists vendors in generating dispute letters, resulted in a 15% increase in merchants’ chargeback defense success rates on average.
AI benefits for small businesses
The AI tools offer a cost-effective solution for merchants, especially smaller businesses, to streamline operations and attract new customers. Over a third of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) on the B2B platform, Alibaba.com reported increased product exposure due to its AI functionalities. These features include a virtual try-on tool that enables vendors to create product images with virtual models, eliminating the need for costly photoshoots.
Aidge also assists merchants in improving image quality, altering image backgrounds, removing backgrounds, and cropping and editing photos. An example of this support is the development of Alibaba International’s AI Refund Agent, which will automatically process transaction disputes, verify evidence, and calculate refund amounts for merchants.
“Small and medium-sized businesses stand to benefit the most from AI advancements, enabling them to overcome traditional barriers including the lack of access to talent and human expertise,” Zhang noted.