For years, online shopping in China has followed a rigid, tedious ritual: typing precise keywords, squinting at endless rows of listings, and falling into a rabbit hole of product comparisons.<\/p>\n
But for a man surnamed Liu, a 30-something finance professional based in Hong Kong, that experience has recently evolved into something more akin to a casual conversation. Chatting with Alibaba Group Holding\u2019s Qwen artificial intelligence assistant, Liu found that he was being offered a few curated choices rather than just a wall of products.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt lowers the decision-making burden,\u201d he said, highlighting the AI assistant\u2019s ability to \u201crefine recommendations through flowing conversation\u201d.<\/p>\n
Liu is one of China\u2019s over 900 million e-commerce users taking part in what has become a massive nationwide retail experiment. Tech companies are racing to replace the rigid, traditional search bar with agentic AI, a move aimed at transforming online shopping from the previous routine of manual clicks into a more streamlined, natural dialogue.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Alibaba, owner of the South China Morning Post, integrated Qwen AI with its Taobao marketplace. By scanning an inventory of 4 billion products, the chatbot acts as a personal shopper \u2013 taking a broad request like \u201cbirthday gift\u201d and then narrowing it down by user preference categories, such as budget and brand. Purchases can be made directly through the chatbot.<\/p>\n
In January, Meituan, the country\u2019s largest on-demand delivery service operator, placed a virtual AI companion at the centre of its app\u2019s navigation bar to help users find local dining and entertainment options.<\/p>\n
The move echoes e-commerce giant JD.com\u2019s 2023 launch of Jingyan, an AI tool built to deliver instant product recommendations and comparisons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For years, online shopping in China has followed a rigid, tedious ritual: typing precise keywords, squinting at endless…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40001,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[24,405,2477,24536,24539,7537,387,24538,2700,24531,24534,24532,6659,24535,24533,24537,24540],"class_list":{"0":"post-40000","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-agentic-ai","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-ai-agents","10":"tag-alibaba","11":"tag-amy-shi","12":"tag-aras-poon","13":"tag-artificial-intelligence-agents","14":"tag-china","15":"tag-guangdong-society-of-reform","16":"tag-hong-kong","17":"tag-jamie-chen","18":"tag-jd-com","19":"tag-jingyan","20":"tag-liu","21":"tag-meituan","22":"tag-peng-peng","23":"tag-qwen-ai","24":"tag-tmall-supermarket"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}