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China’s JD.com ramps up AI use on its platform as founder Richard Liu Qiangdong debuts avatar in live-streaming sessions
- The JD.com founder’s avatar is powered by the company’s own ChatRhino large language model
- The two live-streaming sessions hosted by Liu’s avatar on Tuesday generated more than 20 million views combined
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Coco Fengin Beijing
Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com is ratcheting up the use of artificial intelligence (AI) on its platform, as the avatar of founder and chairman Richard Liu Qiangdong debuted as host of two live-streaming sessions on Tuesday.
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Liu’s avatar, powered by JD.com’s own ChatRhino large language model (LLM), not only succeeded in replicating the company founder’s appearance, voice and accent, but also his known habit of waving his hands as he speaks. LLM is the technology used to train generative AI services like ChatGPT.
The virtual Liu, however, mostly read from a prepared script and did not interact or answer questions from the online audience.
Still, the inaugural live-streaming sessions hosted by Liu’s avatar were a success, as the two campaigns – each lasting less than an hour to promote consumer electronics devices and groceries – generated more than 20 million views combined.
The virtual Liu is expected to host more live-streaming shows in the future, as JD.com touted that its AI-powered virtual streamers now covered more than 4,000 brands.
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That initiative has lowered the cost of holding such sessions by 90 per cent, compared with having human hosts, according to the Beijing-based company.
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