China’s Alibaba releases AI search tool for small businesses in Europe and the Americas
Alibaba International promotes its e-commerce platform for small businesses at the Canton Fair in Guangdong, China, on Oct. 16, 2024.
Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images
BEIJING — Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba on Tuesday unveiled an artificial intelligence-powered search engine for small businesses in Europe and the Americas to source supplies.
It’s an attempt to leverage ChatGPT-like tech to increase sales. Initial tests showed businesses’ purchase intent using the new tool increased by 40% versus traditional search engines, according to Kuo Zhang, president of Alibaba.com and vice president of Alibaba International.
The product is called Accio, after the spell used in the Harry Potter fantasy series for summoning objects. The initial version is web-based and supports English, German, French, Portuguese and Spanish, according to the company.
With a few text or image prompts, businesses can use Accio to find wholesale products — including analysis on their popularity with consumers and projected profit, according to demos viewed by CNBC.
Examples shown included helping a sports entrepreneur to build a line of pickleball products. At the end of the search, the tool lists a number of procurement options for the business to discuss directly with each supplier.
The tech uses generative AI from Alibaba’s Tongyi Qianwen large language model, Zhang said, declining to confirm whether the product integrates AI from other companies.
An LLM is an artificial intelligence model trained on large amounts of data. A model supports generative AI applications, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which generates human-like responses to user prompts. To be sure, several businesses are still in the experimentation phase with AI and many firms are yet to find a way of monetizing the technology.
Accio uses data from 50 million businesses on Alibaba International’s platform, and publicly available industry information, Zhang said. He said the tool incorporates 1 billion product listings and documents covering industries across more than 100 markets from Alibaba.com, the company’s business-to-business platform which sells to companies outside China.
Businesses based in Europe and North America are the largest group of buyers, the company said.
Alibaba’s international arm in October announced an updated version of an AI translation tool to help merchants reach customers in other countries. The company claimed the tech’s translation capabilities beat that of Google, DeepL and ChatGPT.
The international business has grown rapidly in recent years, but Alibaba’s main revenue driver remains its domestic e-commerce platforms Taobao and Tmall. In August 2023, management told investors that “the Taobao app has the greatest potential to become a one stop smart portal for life and consumption enabled by AI.”
During the weeks-long Singles Day shopping festival that wrapped up Monday, more than half of over 500 merchants selling on Chinese e-commerce platforms such as Alibaba and JD.com used a generative AI-enabled tool, according to a survey by Bain & Company.
Those features include AI for customer service and generating content. The survey found 56% of respondents said AI tools had “high positive impact” on improving productivity.
Alibaba is scheduled to report quarterly results on Friday.
—CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal contributed to this report.
An electric air taxi by Joby Aviation flies near the Downtown Manhattan Heliport in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., November 12, 2023.
Roselle Chen | Reuters
Air taxi maker Joby Aviation in a new lawsuit accused competitor Archer Aviation of using stolen information by a former employee to “one-up” a partnership deal with a real estate developer.
“This is corporate espionage, planned and premeditated,” Joby said in the lawsuit filed Wednesday in a California Superior Court in Santa Cruz, where the company is based.
Archer and Joby did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
The lawsuit alleges that former U.S. state and local policy lead, George Kivork, downloaded dozens of files and sent some content to his personal email two days before he resigned in July to take a job at Archer, which had recruited him.
By August, Joby said a partner that worked with Kivork said it had been approached by Archer with a “more lucrative deal.” Joby alleges that the eVTOL rival’s understanding of “highly confidential” details helped it leverage negotiations.
Joby also said the developer attempted to terminate the agreement, citing a breach of confidentiality.
Kivork refused to return the files when Joby approached him after conducting an investigation, according to the suit. The company also said Archer denied wrongdoing, and would not disclose how it learned about the terms of the agreement or provide results from an internal investigation it allegedly undertook.
The lawsuit comes during a busy period for electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) technology as companies race to gain Federal Aviation Administration certification to start flying commercially. ‘
The sector has also benefitted from President Donald Trump‘s newly minted eVTOL pilot program.
Joby argued in the complaint that it’s “imperative” to protect Joby’s work “from this type of espionage” to promote the sector’s success and ensure fair competition.
Last week, Joby said it completed its first test flight for a hybrid aircraft it’s working on with defense contractor L3Harris. This month, Amazon-backed Beta Technologies, another electric flight company, also went public on the New York Stock Exchange.
Joby shares have more than doubled over the last year, while Archer is up about 68%.
In August 2023, Archer settled a previous legal dispute with Boeing-owned Wisk Aero over the alleged theft of trade secrets. As part of the deal, Archer agreed to use Wisk as its autonomous tech partner.
A hearing is scheduled for March 20, 2026.
Joby and Archer year-to-date stock chart.
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