Alibaba International Launches ‘Aidge’, an AI Suite to Enhance Global Commerce Operations
Singapore, November 6, 2023 – Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group today announced the pilot launch of “Aidge,” its first commerce-centric, AI-powered suite of application programming interfaces (APIs) that is poised to streamline global operations for enterprises. Aidge, whose name is an acronym for “AI for Digital and Global Entrepreneurship,” is built on Alibaba International’s proprietary large language models and computer vision models. These models are trained on the company’s insights into global e-commerce operations, allowing Aidge to enhance business performance and reduce costs for enterprises.
Alibaba International, which includes Lazada, AliExpress, Trendyol, and Daraz platforms. It operates across over 190 countries around the world, serving 305 million users every year.
During the pilot testing stage, Alibaba International plans to test more than 15 APIs with interested software as a service (SaaS) partners and independent service vendors (ISVs). These APIs cover various global commerce-related aspects such as consumer insight, content localization, marketing, design and customer service.
“Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) engaged in global commerce continue to face numerous challenges, such as language and cultural barriers, high marketing and user acquisition costs, and talent shortages,” said Kaifu Zhang, Vice President of Alibaba International, who leads the company’s AI initiatives. “Drawing on our years of experience in global commerce, our newly introduced AI suite ‘Aidge’ is dedicated to simplifying global operations for SMEs. It addresses their needs in areas including content localization, customer service and marketing, with the goal of facilitating higher conversion rates and operational efficiency for businesses.”
“I think the present offers a great opportunity for AI to really make global operations easier for SMEs. AI helps them break down language and cultural barriers. It aids in lowering their costs and boosting their efficiency, especially in online marketing and user acquisition. It also provides them with the tools and agents needed to automate some aspects of their businesses and to solve the problem of accessing talent.” Said Mr. Zhang.
In the pilot testing stage, Aidge invites interested SaaS partners and ISVs to test and co-define its suite of more than 15 APIs, which currently support 18 languages. With its robust multilingual, content localization and marketing capabilities, Aidge assists businesses in overcoming language and cultural barriers while also addressing the difficulties that SMEs face in acquiring design, marketing and customer service talent. Data from Alibaba International’s internal application of Aidge has demonstrated the AI suite’s ability to significantly enhance order conversion, consumer satisfaction and time efficiency for SMEs.
Aidge also presents several AI agents equipped to support enterprises in sales conversion, customer enquiry and request management, and search engine optimization. These agents have already been deployed on e-commerce platforms operated by Alibaba International.
Following the announcement, there was a panel discussion about “How will AI impact the evolving global business landscape.” Mohan Jayaraman, the expert partner of Bain & Company, mentioned his team is working with over 100 organizations to adopt AI. They realized there’s tremendous potential in AI capability, but there is a lot of work that needs to be done in terms of change management within the organization to be able to use the technology and data. “This is not just about building a tool, it’s about making sure the tool is used in the right way within the organization. We think early adoption offers a huge advantage for people to get into this area sooner rather than later.”
One of the platforms that is conducting pilot testing with Aidge is South Asian e-commerce platform, Daraz, which will be launching an enhancement to its Daraz Instant Message feature later this month. Aidge’s AI tool provides timely and efficient communication between buyers and sellers through AI-generated prompts. By automating the whole process, shoppers can enjoy a better shopping experience, and sellers will be able to take their online operations to new heights. Moreover, Daraz plans to integrate more of Aidge’s AI capabilities to better meet the needs of its users in the coming months.
“Adopting Alibaba International’s Aidge AI suite has been a seamless process and can potentially be a game-changer for our business. Daraz has always invested in building a cutting-edge tech infrastructure, and we are excited to integrate Aidge technology into our pipeline to enhance our overall platform experience. By empowering sellers to optimize their operations and online stores through AI, we can help them free up their time and spend time on what truly matters: growing their business,” said Tatiana Palhares, Chief Product Officer of Daraz.
Aidge is rolling out its services to merchants on Alibaba International’s e-commerce platforms, and intends to serve more SMEs through collaborations with SaaS partners. It is currently inviting SaaS partners and ISVs to participate. The official website (www.aidc-ai.com) is open for pilot-testing applications today and a staged rollout by region is anticipated by the end of this year.
“Today’s pilot launch of Aidge marks only the beginning. The novelty of AI technologies calls for our collaboration with SaaS partners and ISVs to not only test, but also co-define its use cases. We look forward to making global business operations easier for SMEs, with the help of AI,” added Zhang.
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