Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba has invested heavily in its fast-growing international business as growth slows for its China-focused Taobao and Tmall operations.
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BEIJING — Chinese e-commerce giant AlibabaThe company’s international arm on Wednesday released an updated version of its AI-powered translation tool, which it says is better than products offered by Google, DeepL and ChatGPT.
This is based on an evaluation of Alibaba International’s new model, Marco MT, by Flores translation reference framethe Chinese company said.
Alibaba’s fast-growing international unit launched its AI translation product as an update to a product unveiled about a year ago, which it says already has 500,000 merchant users. Sellers based in one country can use the translation tool to create product pages in the target market’s language.
The new version relies only on large language models, allowing it to draw contextual cues such as culture or industry-specific terms, Kaifu Zhang, vice president of Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group and head of its artificial intelligence initiative, told CNBC business. in an interview on Tuesday.
“The idea is that we want this AI tool to help the traders, because if the traders do well, the platform will do well,” he said.
Large language models power AI applications like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which can also translate text. Models, trained on vast amounts of data, can generate human-like responses to user prompts.
Alibaba’s translation tool is based on its own model called Qwen. The product supports 15 languages: Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish and Ukrainian.
Zhang said he expects “significant demand” for the tool from Europe and America. He also expects emerging markets to be an important area of use.
When users of Alibaba.com — a site for suppliers who sell to businesses — are categorized by country, developing countries account for about half of the top 20 active users of artificial intelligence tools, Zhang said.
Chinese companies are increasingly looking abroad for growth opportunities, especially e-commerce merchants. PDD HoldingsTemu, fast fashion retailer Shein and ByteDance’s TikTok are among recent entrants to the global market. Many China-based merchants also sell Amazon.com.
Contextual data
Ever since Alibaba started the first version of the AI translation tool last fall, the company said merchants have been using it for that more than 100 million product listings. Similar to other AI-based services, basic pricing charges merchants based on the amount of translated text.
Zhang declined to share how much the update would cost. He said it’s included in some service packages for merchants who want simple exposure to overseas users.
His thinking is that contextual translation makes it much more likely that consumers will decide to buy. He shared an example in which a colloquial Chinese description for a slipper would turn off English-speaking consumers if only translated literally, without understanding the implied meaning.
“The updated translation engine will make Double 11 a better experience for consumers because of the more authentic expression,” Zhang said, referring to the Alibaba-led shopping festival centered on November 11 each year.
Alibaba’s international business includes platforms such as AliExpress and Lazada, which mainly targets Southeast Asia. The international unit reported 32% sales increase to $4.03 billion in the quarter ended in June from a year ago.
That contrasted with a 1 percent year-on-year sales decline to $15.6 billion for Alibaba’s main e-commerce business Taobao and Tmall, which has been focused on China.
The Taobao app is also popular with consumers in Singapore. In September, the app launched an English version with AI for users in the country.
Analysts at Nomura expected Alibaba’s international revenue to slow slightly to 29% year-on-year in the quarter ended in September, while operating losses narrowed, according to an Oct. 10 report. Alibaba has not yet announced when it will report quarterly earnings.