Alibaba International launches the first professional version of AI Search. Why will it be the next B2B Google?

After experiencing the hustle and bustle of the "Thousand Model War", one and a half years later, the application layer innovation of generative AI has finally entered an explosive period. Sora at the beginning of the year sparked a wave of AI + video generation. The ripples have not yet dissipated, and OpenAI’s new SearchGPT has ignited the AI ​​+ search war again. AI + search, this is actually how most people imagined its application when the wave of generative AI technology first emerged: changing the traditional search engine. On this battlefield, Perplexity is starting anew, Google is thinking about self-innovation, and Bing is busy taking advantage of the situation. Now, Alibaba International has also announced its entry into the game, directly bringing a new product. But unlike everyone else, Alibaba International’s AI search has entered a blank space: the field of in-depth information search involving Know-How in more industries. Alibaba International has chosen the "global e-commerce" industry that it is best at, aiming to change the global procurement process and make it more intuitive and efficient. At a press conference held in Paris, France on July 31, Alibaba International officially announced the world’s first AI-driven B2B procurement search engine. It is understood that this AI procurement search engine will be officially launched in September this year. At the press conference in Paris, Zhang Kuo, Vice President of Alibaba International, demonstrated this new product. It can proactively understand buyers' natural language and convert it into professional procurement requests; it can also predict demand and provide suggestions based on global market data to achieve more accurate matching.

1. The industry believes that this will become the "next Google" in global trade.

2. "The new AI search engine is not an improvement on the basis of traditional passive search. It is a new global trade procurement experience." Zhang Kuo said.

3. For small and medium-sized business owners engaged in procurement, it can first understand your "vernacular", automatically translate it into professional procurement terms, and then have a step-by-step conversation with you, and intelligently integrate information from the entire network to eliminate passivity. Search is for active understanding, to understand and even predict your needs more accurately.

4. At the same time, it reconstructs the way information is presented and can actively help you compare information and recommend the most suitable suppliers.

5. Finally, it can also provide more complete procurement services and ultimately help you complete the entire trade process.

6. If Google in the past was just passively responding and matching web page information with the keywords you entered, then this new AI procurement search engine is truly understanding product information and understanding the needs of enterprises. , and then actively complete accurate matching.

7. The release of Sora once made everyone marvel that "AI begins to understand and generate the real physical world." So this AI search engine seems to have begun to understand the business logic of the real world?

8.AI makes "interlaced" no longer "like separated by mountains"

9. In the decades since the rise of the Internet, "search engines" have been the mainstream way for the public to access all kinds of information.

10. But we know that the cost of obtaining information in professional fields with traditional search engines is very high. Looking for professional knowledge on the vast Internet is like "finding a needle in a haystack". It takes many attempts to get close to the desired results.

11. This is especially true for cross-border e-commerce buyers and sellers. The work of discovering business opportunities and determining procurement channels is time-consuming and labor-intensive and involves a tedious data classification process. It is a very complex process for humans. complex knowledge system.

12. If you don’t have certain professional knowledge, you won’t even know what to search for. This may be the traditional meaning of "every other line is like a mountain".

13. People need AI search tools that can help them quickly find deeper and more valuable information and better understand their own needs.

14. Large model technology that is good at command following, long context summary, and content generation has become a key force in leveraging this search revolution.

15. Simply put, the AI ​​procurement search engine launched by Alibaba International is like injecting expert knowledge in the field of cross-border e-commerce into a general model, providing an "intuitive and natural way for knowledge to emerge." Their AI products have learned 1 billion commodities and industry knowledge, which almost covers the world’s largest knowledge base in the B2B trade field.

16. At the press conference in Paris, Alibaba International showed the example of Simone, a former professional tennis player. After she retired, she discovered that the emerging sport of pickleball was very popular and wanted to start a business.

17. But she lacks professional knowledge and has never been exposed to global procurement. What should she do as the first step?

18. The answer is to open the AI ​​search engine of Alibaba International and tell the AI ​​your thoughts just like chatting.

19. The AI ​​procurement search engine will conduct in-depth analysis based on all market insights related to pickleball around the world, and recommend multiple possible entrepreneurial directions, such as pickleball rackets, training shoes, etc. It also comprehensively lists various indicators: competition intensity, low and peak seasons, market demand, price range...

1. Based on the AI ​​research results, Simone decided to start with pickleball training shoes.

2. Based on many years of tennis experience, she proposed that training shoes should have the function of adjusting training modes.
3. Although she lacked experience in manufacturing sports shoes, Simone used AI interpretation to clarify her needs: find a supplier who can add weights to sneakers.

   

   Soon, the world’s best supplier of this type of shoes was revealed in front of Simona:

   

   After that, AI can also multi-dimensionally understand the information of various products and suppliers it recommends , compare various indicators of different supplies with one click, making Simone’s choice much easier now.

   

   1. Optimize the search experience

Through traditional search engines, entrepreneurs and buyers need to browse the search results page by page, find the required product information in the huge amount of information, and record it one by one for comparison.

2. Advantages of AI Search

AI Search greatly reduces the cost for users to obtain effective answers, saving several orders of magnitude of time and energy compared to the past.

3. Comprehensive procurement services

In addition to information retrieval, the AI ​​procurement search engine also provides comprehensive intelligent procurement services.

4. Integrate professional knowledge

Drawing on Alibaba International’s 25 years of digital foreign trade experience and expertise, the AI ​​procurement search engine integrates professional knowledge in all aspects of transaction payment, logistics fulfillment, etc.

5. Intimate service

Just like a professional buyer, the AI ​​procurement search engine can provide a full range of services such as communication summary and follow-up delivery.

Global e-commerce is the best place for AI

Global e-commerce has always been one of the best application directions of AI technology. The rich scenarios in the e-commerce industry are an excellent place for AI to be used.

But this AI procurement search engine launched by Alibaba International is completely different from the simple efficiency improvement tools in the past. To a certain extent, it is no longer an AI that simply assists simple tasks, but is too much like a "super personal assistant" ”.

The realization of this capability is closely related to multiple technological advances in the era of generative AI.

As we all know, the most common source of large model pre-training data is the public Internet, and many professional fields have outdated and missing information.

In order to solve this problem, on the basis of general large models, the industry often uses supervised fine-tuning to update model knowledge to improve specific capabilities. RAG (Retrieval Augmentation Generation) is also another effective method. Simply put, RAG first retrieves relevant documents and then uses them as additional context to perform generation, which can provide access to a larger knowledge base.

It is understood that the AI ​​procurement search engine released by Alibaba International has learned more than 1 billion pieces of product and industry information from the entire network during the training stage, especially professional product knowledge. This is why it can accurately convert simple "vernacular" into professional vocabulary in the e-commerce field, and complete in-depth screening work to help merchants overcome some shortcomings in professional knowledge.

For Alibaba International, using generative AI technology to bring a new cross-border e-commerce experience will be an important future growth point for its global business. The release of the AI ​​procurement search engine is only one part of it.

As early as November last year, Alibaba International released its first AI product "Aidge", opening 15 APIs and multiple Agent frameworks, supporting 18 languages, helping global merchants overcome language and... cultural barriers and improve business results.

In the past year, Alibaba International has tested AI capabilities in more than 40 scenarios, served more than 500,000 small and medium-sized merchants, and 100 million products have been optimized. On average, merchants’ calls to AI double every two months, and now reach an average of 50 million times a day.

Continuous AI investment, rich AI scenarios and surging AI demand are actually the core elements supporting Alibaba International’s launch of a new AI procurement search engine and changing the global trade experience in a truly AI-native way.

Are the “Professional Googles”

coming in the AI ​​era?

When generative AI swept the world, there was a thought-provoking point of view in the industry: all applications are worth redoing with large models.

As one of the highly anticipated “rework” directions, the value of “AI Search” in improving user experience has now been fully verified in practice. From content recommendation to knowledge integration, the barriers to entry in any field are continuing to lower, allowing ordinary people to obtain information more directly and easily.

After being “reworked” for the professional track, the implementation value of AI Search has become more concrete. The AI ​​procurement search engine released by Alibaba International takes the lead in charting the implementation of "B2B Google in the AI ​​Era" and sets a pattern for the application of generative AI technology in various professional fields.

With the participation of more players in niche fields, it is conceivable that every industry will have its own "Google" in the future.

The impact of changes in the way of obtaining information will actually be essential. A search-driven revolution may be coming sooner than we think.

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