JD.COM, one of China’s top e-commerce platforms, launched a livestream shopping session with an AI clone of its CEO Liu Qiangdong as the host Tuesday night.

Liu’s AI clone, powered by the company’s language model ChatRhino, was featured on the livestream. He vividly performed detailed movements, such as pinching his thumb and index finger together.

The livestream promoting JD Supermarket’s merchandise lasted about 40 minutes, with Liu spending about 3 to 5 minutes on each product.

He unveiled steep discounts for daily groceries, fruit and fresh food such as beef, and yogurt through lucky draws during the livestream.

Recording the highest ever viewership at JD’s procurement and sales livestreaming channel of over 13 million, the transaction amount has also been a hit. The total number of orders surged 7.6 times from a week earlier and sales volume of agricultural products with deep discounts such as corns and eggs jumped 5.7 times within the first half hour of the session.

In a preview video shared on JD’s official social media account, the AI Liu said that he will share his insights on “food, reading and lifestyle.”

A separate promotional activity, featuring home appliances, smart TVs and tickets for the UEFA Euro 2024 soccer tournament, also drew bargain hunters as well as those eager to see what an AI avatar looked like.

Amid its latest initiative to promote video content and livestreams to boost sales, the e-commerce site earlier this month announced 1 billion yuan (US$138.1 million) in cash incentives to attract video content creators and institutions to its platform.

According to the annual report on China’s internet audiovisual services, China has over 1 billion online audiovisual users, with users on short video applications seeing the highest retention rate.

Over 70% of users are engaged with short videos and livestream shopping. Over 40% of internet users regard online streaming and short video formats to be important shopping channels.

(CGTN, Shine)