Virtual Liu hosts JD.com live-streaming sessions

E-commerce giant JD.com is ratcheting up the use of artificial intelligence (AI) on its platform, with the avatar of founder and chairman Richard Liu Qiangdong debuting as the host of two live-streaming sessions yesterday.

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 spoke.

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.

Still, the inaugural livestreaming 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, as JD.com said its AI-powered virtual streamers now covered more than 4,000 brands.

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.

JD.com’s virtual hosting technology can also reply to 70 per cent of the frequently asked questions during a live-streaming session, according to the company.

The debut of Liu’s avatar shows the growing trend in China to create and use virtual livestreaming hosts capable of roundthe-clock sessions, which has raised the stakes in this market segment and will potentially disrupt the occupations of the hundreds of thousands of human live streamers.

JD.com’s campaign with the virtual Liu is likely to push the envelope on how live-streaming campaigns will be conducted, especially during the Singles’ Day shopping festival later this year.

During last year’s Singles’ Day pre-sales campaign, Alibaba Group Holding’s sessions on Taobao Live were led by a dozen human live streamers, including top influencer Austin Li Jiaqi and actor-singer Allen Lin Yilun. Alibaba owns the Post.

JD.com in late February had already applied for trademarks related to its founder’s avatar, including “Liu Qiangdong”, “Old Liu”, and “Old Liu’s special session”.