Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has launched a conversational AI tool named after a Harry Potter spell, aimed at making global trade easier and less risky for small to medium businesses. While a long shadow may loom over China’s trading prospects as an incoming Trump Administration looks to raise tariffs on imported goods, Alibaba’s president, Kuo […]
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has launched a conversational AI tool named after a Harry Potter spell, aimed at making global trade easier and less risky for small to medium businesses.
While a long shadow may loom over China’s trading prospects as an incoming Trump Administration looks to raise tariffs on imported goods, Alibaba’s president, Kuo Zhang, summoned a confident, no-nonsense performance in front of start up founders, investors and enterprises gathered at this year’s Web Summit in Lisbon yesterday.
Alibaba Group Holdings’ international commerce arm, Zhang announced, has launched an AI search assistant for online retailers that automates complex and time-consuming tasks to enable them to launch products.
According to Zhang, the product will address up to 28 different pain points that merchants looking to trade globally currently face around initiating product searches, sourcing and negotiating with suppliers, completing transactions and clearing customs.
Based on Alibaba’s knowledge in the areas of B2B fulfilment, logistics, after-sales support and product listings, the AI tool is set to address some of these major trade barriers, Zhang claimed. Users will be able to interact with Accio – affectionately named after the summoning charm in Harry Potter – in real time and connect with business trade all over the world.
The AI sourcing agent relies less on magic, however, and more on Alibaba’s ability to scan for information on products and trends, with recommendations from real users and insights from industry experts, Zhang said.
The AI will also furnish the user with context and trading information on different territories where the purchase is made via Wiki-style pages, he added.
Magic source
“Global trade is worth US$30trillion – it’s worth exploring. We believe that the internet has the power to democratise opportunities and bring them to SMEs that typically have fewer resources than larger companies,” Kuo Zhang said.
“In the age of AI Accio will help focus on making sound business decisions and every SME will feel like they have a sourcing agent that helps them source like a pro,” he added.
Alibaba president, Kuo Zhang
According to Zhang, initial tests on the web-based tool have shown businesses’ purchase intent using the new tool increased by 40% versus traditional search engines.
The ecommerce leader said that the firm’s international commerce arm also wanted to expand the use of the Accio outside its own ecosystem, targeting more than 358 million small-and medium-sized enterprises worldwide.
The tool currently supports English, German, French, Portuguese and Spanish.
Singles Day
Last year the Chinese retail giant launched AI tools for sellers at Web Summit, which Zhang added are now used by 60,000 users worldwide.
“Half of them are SMEs in developing countries such as Pakistan Vietnam and Bangladesh. Seven million products have been posted by these tools and they have increased conversion by 27%,” he said.
Zhang’s announcement at Web Summit was made the day after China celebrated Singles Day, the biggest event in the nation’s retail calendar.
Viewed as a Valentine’s Day for single people – Singles Day (also known as “Double 11”) sees people treat themselves with gifts and presents, as well as throwing parties.
Reuters reports that, as a retail event, it’s worth more than four times the $38billion US shoppers spent last year during Cyber Week – the period from Black Friday to Cyber Monday.
Portuguese LLM
At the opening of Web Summit, Portugal’s Prime Minister Luis Montenegro announced the launch of a Portuguese large language model “to preserve our language and use our culture to serve innovation.”
Launching in the first quarter of 2025, Montenegro said that the LLM would give “each student an artificial intelligence educational tutor adapted to our curriculum” and “access to public administration services in a simpler, more direct and personalised way”.
Montenegro also said that locally-based enterprises now had the “opportunity to design their services in an era of artificial intelligence in Portuguese”.
