50% of Cross-Border Workers Are Using AI? The Industrialization of AI is a Major Variable in Cross-Border E-Commerce This Year.
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The industrialization of AI may be a significant variable in cross-border e-commerce this year.
Since the emergence of ChatGPT, industries across the board have sought to leverage large models to bring about deeper transformations. Discussions and iterations about AI are rapidly heating up in the cross-border e-commerce sector.
Some say that cross-border e-commerce is a field highly suitable for AI-driven reform. Many cross-border service providers have found through research that over 50% of merchants have already used one or several AI products in their operations.
Large-scale models with billions of parameters are changing consumer habits, and the practical application of AI in cross-border e-commerce is gradually taking root: AI customer service is increasingly replacing human agents, providing professional answers to product inquiries, learning the linguistic nuances of target countries, and operating tirelessly 24/7. Digital hosts are reducing the management and training costs of overseas hosts to some extent. When users enter keywords in the search bars of e-commerce or social media platforms, they no longer see links ranked by ad bidding but encounter AI products acting as 'personal shopping assistants,' offering tailored recommendations and product suggestions...
The importance of large models has become a global consensus. For cross-border e-commerce, what additional value can practitioners create with AI? And what directions are being explored with promising results?
01
Trend Insights + Marketing Creation
First, cross-border e-commerce enterprises can utilize AI technology to analyze vast amounts of data, quickly grasp market dynamics, track trends, and obtain more accurate and efficient market insights. In specific cross-border e-commerce operations, AI's analytical capabilities can be applied to review analysis, intelligent product selection, pricing strategies, product recommendations, thereby improving traffic efficiency and order conversion rates.
▍SHULEX: Amazon Review Analysis and Consumer Insights Tool "Shulex VOC"
Shulex VOC is an Amazon review analysis and consumer insights tool based on ChatGPT-4 technology. It combines ChatGPT with Shulex's proprietary model (developed in collaboration with over a hundred clients) to create a consumer insights model. With this, Shulex VOC helps Amazon sellers analyze product strengths and weaknesses, consumer purchase motivations, buyer expectations, usage scenarios, user profiles, and further conducts detailed product research, competitor analysis, market trends, keyword tracking, sales monitoring, and product innovation testing.
Additionally, AI can assist in creating product descriptions and marketing content for cross-border e-commerce. It helps overseas operations teams overcome language barriers by automatically generating more localized and natural marketing materials, including text, images, and videos.
Amazon: AI Listing Creation Feature "Generate Listing Content"
At the 2023 Accelerate conference, Amazon launched a new generative AI listing creation feature—Generate Listing Content (EARLY ACCESS)—based on large language models (LLMs). Through targeted training on vast datasets, this tool can identify, summarize, translate, predict, and generate text and other content to help sellers create more comprehensive and accurate product titles and descriptions.
For cross-border sellers, they only need to provide a brief description of the product, a few keywords, or a few sentences to receive AI-generated, high-quality titles, bullet points, and product descriptions that meet Amazon's requirements. This simplifies the listing creation process, enabling sellers to list new products faster and more easily.
Baidu International: Global AI Integrated Marketing Platform "MediaGo"
MediaGo is a global AI-integrated marketing platform under Baidu International, offering cross-media marketing solutions, including programmatic advertising, agency advertising, and AI-powered recommendations. The MediaGo advertising platform utilizes an AI advertising engine for precise marketing based on media context, applying deep learning technology across the entire marketing chain. This includes traffic anti-fraud, traffic quality prediction, ad click-through rate prediction, smart bidding, conversion rate prediction, user intent prediction, and dynamic creatives—ensuring advertisers achieve a higher return on investment (ROI).
Made-in-China.com: AI Foreign Trade Assistant "Mike"
Focus Technology's one-stop B2B cross-border trade platform, Made-in-China.com (MIC International Station), has launched the AI foreign trade assistant "Mike." It provides services tailored to different business scenarios, including marketing, creative content, and procurement communication, acting as an "AI marketing expert, AI creative brain, and AI all-around assistant."
In practical applications, Mike plays a key role in information publishing, product optimization, buyer interaction, and business opportunity follow-up. Specific functions include multilingual translation, product description writing, image processing, SEO analysis, description polishing, inquiry analysis, buyer tracking, intelligent replies, and sales letter generation.
02
AI Models and Digital Hosts
AIGC technology is also transforming the e-commerce industry, particularly in generating model images for clothing and digital hosts.
Compared to traditional methods, domestic clothing companies expanding overseas require e-commerce images that cater to different countries, ethnicities, ages, sizes, aesthetics, and cultures. Traditional model photography is costly, but AI-generated model technology can solve this market pain point.
Additionally, overseas live-streaming hosts are difficult to recruit, manage, and retain, and they often lack the ideal appearance despite their sales skills. These are the three major pain points frequently encountered by cross-border e-commerce influencer marketing agencies. Digital hosts can, to some extent, address these issues.
However, in the current market environment, digital hosts come with uncertainties. Compared to real hosts, AI avatars may appear more rigid and lack warmth, affecting interaction effectiveness. Moreover, platforms have an ambiguous stance toward digital hosts, with no clear rules established.
Google: AI Virtual Try-On Tool
Google has introduced generative AI technology into online shopping tools, including allowing consumers to virtually try on clothes and recommending specific products based on consumer preferences. By clicking the "Try on models" button, users can quickly generate clothing images on models of different body types, skin tones, and hairstyles, helping them determine if the clothes suit their physique.
The product manager overseeing this feature at Google stated: "AI can generate images of models wearing clothing based on retailer website photos, with detailed rendering of folds, wraps, stretches, wrinkles, and shadows. It's difficult for users to discern with the naked eye that these images are AI-generated."
▍Graphic Origin: AI Model Image Generation for E-commerce
Graphic Origin, an online collaborative 3D creation engine company, has applied AIGC in the fashion e-commerce industry, successfully implementing an "AI Model Image Generation for E-commerce" service. The company uses AIGC models to create marketing images for clothing e-commerce, helping cross-border sellers efficiently generate product detail and marketing images tailored to different countries and regions.
▍Tekan Technology: Digital Live-Streaming Tool "Host Treasure"
Tekan Technology, an e-commerce operations SaaS provider, has launched the digital live-streaming tool "Host Treasure," which uses real people to drive AI digital hosts for live sales. The tool generates digital host videos driven by text or voice, significantly reducing the costs for merchants in hiring overseas hosts.
▍Yidian Tianxia: AIGC Digital Marketing Creation Platform "KreadoAI"
KreadoAI, a global intelligent marketing service provider under Easylinkin, offers four major solutions: AI digital humans, AI models, AI tools, and AI creative assets. The AI digital human solution includes three key functions: AI digital spokesperson videos, 1:1 real human digital clone replication, and voiceprint cloning. These can be applied in business travel recommendations, e-commerce shopping, app downloads, education and training, and corporate services. The platform provides over 140 languages and nearly 100 digital character templates, allowing cross-border sellers to generate digital spokesperson videos by inputting marketing text or keywords.
03
Chatbots
Due to language barriers, time differences, and cultural factors, global businesses often struggle to provide 24/7 and accurate customer communication. AI-powered customer service addresses this pain point for cross-border sellers. By learning product-related data and integrating public domain information, AI can offer more comprehensive Q&A support and a sense of familiarity through localized language.
Moreover, beyond consumer-facing applications, many AI chatbots also serve as intelligent assistants for merchants.
However, the cross-border AI customer service market is still in its early stages. Different target markets overseas have varying application scenarios and conversational contexts, requiring significant time and effort for scenario understanding, demand analysis, data accumulation, and model optimization.
▍Shopify: 'Sidekick' to Help Sellers Analyze Financial Business
Shopify has introduced an AI chatbot called 'Sidekick,' which helps sellers manage their online stores and analyze their financial performance. The chatbot is embedded as a button on Shopify and responds to seller inquiries, including detailed information about sales trends. It can also assist sellers in updating their store information on Shopify.
Tobi Lütke, Shopify's founder and CEO, stated: 'Every seller encounters various challenges while building their business. What makes Sidekick unique is its ability to understand the specific context of each store and guide sellers to take action.'
▍TikTok: 'Tako' for Video Recommendations and Inspiration
TikTok is testing its own AI chatbot, 'Tako.' Users can interact with Tako to ask questions about videos or seek recommendations, helping them discover new content.
For example, when users watch videos of King Charles III's coronation, Tako might prompt them to ask, 'What is the significance of King Charles III's coronation ceremony?' Additionally, users can ask Tako to recommend videos on specific topics, such as fun makeup tutorials. Tako will automatically provide the video title, theme, and links to related recommended videos, allowing users to watch by clicking on the thumbnail.
▍Lazada: 'LazzieChat' as a Personal Shopping Assistant
This is Southeast Asia's first AI chatbot powered by OpenAI's ChatGPT technology. Specifically, LazzieChat can understand user queries and suggest products or topics that might interest them. Currently, LazzieChat can intelligently respond to user questions, act as a personal shopping assistant, and provide personalized recommendations and product suggestions. For sellers, the chatbot LazzieChat functions like a 24/7 official customer service bot.
▍Quick CEP: A Shopping Assistant Chatbot That Stimulates Purchase Desire
The overseas marketing SaaS provider QuickCEP has integrated its AI chatbot capabilities with large language models to launch a next-generation cross-border shopping assistant chatbot, addressing the needs of cross-border sellers in brand marketing, customer service, and refined operations.
Taking cosmetics as an example, QuickCEP can engage in intelligent shopping dialogues with consumers, understanding their skin type, age group, gender, budget, etc., to provide personalized product recommendations and corresponding discounts, thereby stimulating purchase intent.
▍Jishiyu: Reducing Complaints, Returns, and Chargebacks with AI Technology to Avoid Account Suspension Risks
Jishiyu, a one-stop intelligent customer service platform for cross-border e-commerce, was among the early adopters of OpenAI services, successfully implementing the ChatGPT model in cross-border customer service scenarios. Its product helps cross-border sellers communicate with global buyers, improving efficiency, conversion rates, and reducing complaints, returns, and chargebacks, while mitigating Facebook account suspension risks and enhancing brand recognition and customer satisfaction.
On the product and technical front, Jishiyu has integrated with Facebook and Instagram messaging tools, as well as email platforms like NetEase, Yahoo, Gmail, and Outlook. It has also achieved API connectivity with over 10 major cross-border e-commerce platforms and applications, including Amazon, eBay, Shopify, Shoplaza, SHOPLINE, and Shopyy. Clients can authorize multiple channels and stores with one click, enabling centralized customer management through a unified interface.
Additionally, Jishiyu has developed new features such as automated email content generation, multi-turn conversations, intelligent quality inspection, and a smart knowledge base.
Furthermore, to ensure the accuracy and timeliness of AI customer service responses, Timely Language has undergone multiple iterations and upgrades. The current AI model boasts an accuracy rate of over 99% in language and emotion recognition, and over 95% in intent recognition, effectively addressing the previous issues of rigid and inflexible AI responses.
04
Enhancing Cross-Border Efficiency
The advent of AI has rewritten the rules of cross-border operations and significantly improved overall efficiency.
Cross-border operations are vast and complex, involving multiple stages such as product development, supplier interviews, marketing, logistics, and after-sales services. A robust foreign trade product can help cross-border sellers transition from optimizing individual points to enhancing the entire supply chain, thereby elevating the operational efficiency of cross-border businesses to the next level.
▍Alibaba International Station: Smart Procurement Assistant 'Smart Assistant'
Alibaba International Station has released this 'Smart Procurement Assistant' to address the procurement needs of global small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It enhances various aspects such as intelligent image search, smart demand posting, intelligent communication, and logistics services, thereby improving procurement efficiency for SMEs, especially in sourcing Chinese products.
▍AroundDeal: Providing Business Information for B2B Enterprises
Global business information provider AroundDeal has focused its target customers on Chinese B2B enterprises expanding overseas and B2B enterprises in emerging markets, creating an AI-powered product. Specifically, AroundDeal offers cross-border sellers eight functions, including overseas enterprise and contact database queries, data completion, website visitor identity analysis, multi-channel automated outreach, LinkedIn plugins, and APIs. These features encompass AI-enhanced solutions for overseas customer acquisition, marketing, and recruitment.
One of the core challenges of globalization is how to effectively enter overseas markets. Sales teams spend significant time researching suitable companies and contacts and obtaining their contact information. This is particularly difficult for Chinese enterprises expanding abroad. AroundDeal addresses this by providing access to a database of over 100 million enterprises, contacts, and business insights to improve operational efficiency.
▍SparkX: Omnichannel AI Advertising Platform 'Xmars'
Cross-border integrated digital marketing service provider SparkX's Xmars combines dozens of AI predictive algorithm models to help sellers reduce guesswork in targeting consumers and marketing outcomes, transforming operational experience into data science.
For cross-border sellers, they only need to set their marketing goals, and the AI will automatically initiate optimizations, including intelligent adjustments across dimensions such as budget, bidding, targeting, and ad structure setup, achieving true human-machine collaboration.
▍Kua.ai: Automated Pre-Sale, In-Sale, and Post-Sale Marketing Process
Kua.ai focuses on building an AIGC marketing management platform for cross-border e-commerce. The Kua.ai team began exploring the application of GPT-2-based text-generation large language models and multimodal audio-video technology in marketing as early as 2021.
After its official establishment in 2022, it positioned itself as an AI Native marketing application in the cross-border e-commerce sector. By integrating cross-border industry data, content generation, and publishing operations, it helps cross-border sellers automate the entire pre-sale, in-sale, and post-sale marketing process.
▍40Seas: Faster, Cheaper, and Easier Access to Working Capital
40Seas is a B2B 'Buy Now, Pay Later' (BNPL) cross-border trade financing provider. The company utilizes data and AI capabilities to deliver innovative financing solutions for small and medium-sized importers and exporters engaged in cross-border trade.
Specifically, cross-border trade scenarios are complex, making it difficult to obtain credit data, and the establishment of risk control models heavily relies on strong industry expertise—a long-standing pain point in the industry. 40Seas can leverage AI's computational power to identify investable buyers and allocate credit limits commensurate with their potential, enabling SMEs in international trade to access working capital faster, more affordably, and with greater ease.