Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba has invested heavily in its fast-growing international business as growth of its China-focused Taobao and Tmall businesses slows.
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BEIJING—Chinese e-commerce giant AlibabaOn Wednesday, the company’s international unit rolled out an updated version of its artificial intelligence translation tool that it says is better than offerings from Google, DeepL and ChatGPT.
This is based on an assessment of Alibaba International’s new model Marco MT Translation benchmark framework Floresthe Chinese company said.
Alibaba’s fast-growing international unit has launched an artificial intelligence translation product as an update to a product launched about a year ago that it said is already in 500,000 merchant users. Sellers located in one country can use translation tools to build product pages in the language of their target market.
Zhang Fu, vice president of Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group and head of business artificial intelligence initiatives, told CNBC that the new version is based solely on large-scale language models, allowing it to take advantage of contextual clues such as cultural or industry-specific terminology.
“The idea is that we want this artificial intelligence tool to help merchants make money, because if the merchants do well, the platform will do well,” he said.
Large language models power artificial intelligence applications, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which can also translate text. These models are trained on large amounts of data to produce human-like responses to user prompts.
Alibaba’s translation tool is based on its own model, 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 expected “massive demand” for the tool in Europe and the Americas. He also expects emerging markets to become important areas of use.
Zhang said that when users of Alibaba, a website where vendors sell products to businesses, are broken down by country, developing countries account for about half of the top 20 active users of AI tools.
Chinese companies are increasingly looking for growth opportunities overseas, especially e-commerce. Pinduoduo HoldingsTemu, fast fashion seller Shein and ByteDance-owned TikTok are among the latest companies to enter the global market. Many Chinese merchants also sell online amazon.com.
situational cues
Since the launch of Alibaba The first version of its artificial intelligence translation tool Last fall, the company said merchants were already using it for Over 100 million product listings. Similar to other AI-based services, basic pricing charges merchants by the amount of text translated.
Zhang declined to say how much the updated version would cost. He said it is included in some service packages for merchants who want to simply reach overseas users.
The idea is that contextual translation makes consumers more likely to decide to buy. He shared an example where a colloquial Chinese description of slippers could turn off English-speaking consumers if translated literally without understanding the underlying meaning.
“The updated translation engine will make Double 11 a better experience for consumers because its expressions are more authentic,” Zhang said, referring to the Alibaba-led shopping festival held every November 11.
Alibaba’s international business includes platforms such as AliExpress and Lazada, mainly targeting Southeast Asia. International unit reports Sales increased by 32% For the quarter ended in June, it was up $4.03 billion on the year.
By comparison, sales at Alibaba’s main e-commerce businesses, Taobao and Tmall, which are focused on China, fell 1% annually to $15.6 billion.
The Taobao app is also popular with Singaporean consumers. In September, the app launched an artificial intelligence-powered English version for users in the country.
According to a report released by Nomura Securities analysts on October 10, Alibaba’s annual international revenue growth is expected to slow slightly to 29% in the quarter ending in September, while operating losses will narrow. Alibaba has not yet announced when it will release quarterly earnings.
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