Chinese tech giant Alibaba is moving to strengthen its competitive edge in the e-commerce sector with the help of artificial intelligence. The e-commerce giant has unveiled a new AI-powered search tool that it hopes will attract more small businesses from Europe and the US to its shopping platforms. Accio is the latest AI tool that leverages CHATGPT-like tech to enhance how people shop on its platforms.
Alibaba AI Search Tool
With a few text or image prompts, small businesses will find wholesale products on Alibaba platforms while leveraging the AI-powered tool. Initial shopping tests using the tool have shown businesses’ purchase intent increases by 40% compared to using traditional search tools. In addition to generating items based on searches, the tool also analyses the product’s popularity and the profits businesses are likely to get from selling the products.
Accio leverages generative AI from Alibaba’s Tongyi Qianwen large language model. It also uses data from over 50 million businesses to provide the best search experience in Alibaba. It also makes use of 1 billion product listings and documents covering industries across more than 100 markets from Alibaba.com.
Amazon Olympus
Even as Alibaba takes the fight against other e-commerce giants in the battle for customers’ dollars on its platforms, Amazon is also ramping up the pressure. The US e-commerce giant is strengthening its edge around generative AI with the development of an advanced large language model.
Olympus is Amazon’s new AI technology tool that can process text and analyze images and videos. It strengthens the company’s edge in taking on OpenAI, Google and Microsoft in AI-powered searches. Amazon hopes that Olympus will make it as simple as typing a few words to search for particular visual moments.
Third-party AI technologies, like the Claude chatbot from Anthropic, have been a significant component of Amazon’s AWS platform. Olympus, however, indicates a change. Amazon’s resolve to lessen its dependency on outside alliances and establish a niche for itself in the generative AI market is reflected in this new model.
Amazon has come under fire for its lack of innovation in generative AI compared to Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI. But that story could be altered by Olympus. Amazon doubled down on its AI investments last week, investing an additional $4 billion in Anthropic. The company’s dedication to maintaining its competitiveness is demonstrated by this investment, which comes after a comparable one in September 2023. However, Olympus indicates that its AI strategy will become more independent in the future.
US vs. China on AI
Meanwhile, it will be more difficult for Chinese companies to access vital components they need to manufacture artificial intelligence chips. Even with a few days in office, President Joe Biden’s Administration has imposed restrictions to curb the sale of high bandwidth memory and chip-making equipment.
The new curbs are part of the US push to restrict China’s development and advanced semiconductors and AI systems that can be used to strengthen the military. According to a senior administration official, the controls that were unveiled restrict the sale of three software tools and two dozen different types of manufacturing equipment to China, with exceptions for nations that are able to impose such controls themselves. The goal is to pave the way for those nations, such as the Netherlands and Japan, to implement similar restrictions. In public, neither Tokyo nor The Hague has stated that they will.
