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Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group said on Monday it is piloting Aidge, its first artificial intelligence-powered suite of application programming interfaces.

During the pilot, Alibaba International is offering Aidge to merchants to help boost conversion rates and cut costs.

Aidge is built on Alibaba International’s proprietary large language models (LLMs) and computer vision models trained on the company’s expertise in e-commerce. Alibaba International is the overseas commerce arm of Alibaba Group, housing Lazada, AliExpress, Alibaba.com and Trendyol among other businesses.

An LLM is an AI algorithm that can understand, summarize, generate and predict new content. Generative AI could drive a 7% increase in global GDP over a decade, according to a report by Goldman Sachs, an investment bank. Computer vision deals with the automatic extraction, analysis and understanding of useful information from a single image or a sequence of images.

AI is seen as a mass leveler, allowing even small businesses to compete on the global stage with bigger competitors. AI used expertly can help overcome perennial challenges such as language and cultural barriers, high marketing and user acquisition costs, as well as talent shortages.

“Aidge is dedicated to simplifying global operations for SMEs,” said Kaifu Zhang, Vice President of Alibaba International, who leads the company’s AI initiatives.

Helping Hand

Alibaba International’s internal tests show Aidge’s can significantly enhance SMEs’ order conversion, consumer satisfaction and efficiency.

One of the platforms taking part in the pilot is South Asian e-commerce platform Daraz, which will launch an upgrade to its instant messaging feature later this month.

“Adopting Alibaba International’s Aidge AI suite has been a seamless process and can potentially be a game-changer for our business,” said Tatiana Palhares, Daraz’s Chief Product Officer in a statement.

During the pilot, Alibaba International will test over 15 APIs with software as a service (SaaS) partners and independent service vendors.

The APIs cover areas including:

• Consumer insights: Customer feedback analysis and selling point extraction, among other features
• Content localization: Product content localization that covers both text and images
• Customer service: Multilingual live chat, shopping assistant chatbot and customer service chatbot, among other features
• Design: Various design templates that produce marketing creatives or exhibits for product showcasing
• Marketing: Automated search engine optimization and marketing message generation

Aidge also presents several AI agents equipped to support enterprises in sales conversion, customer inquiry and request management, and search engine optimization. These agents have already been deployed on e-commerce platforms operated by Alibaba International.

Aidge is rolling out its services to merchants on Alibaba International’s e-commerce platforms and through collaborations with SaaS partners. It supports 18 languages.

“Today’s pilot launch of Aidge marks only the beginning. The novelty of AI technologies calls for our collaboration with SaaS partners worldwide to not only test, but also co-define its use cases,” added Zhang in a statement.