Salesmen Beware!
Baidu (BIDU) is a Chinese multinational company, known for its cloud infrastructure and services and, more recently, for its AI models (ERNIE, Apollo VTA, Paddle framework). Often known as the “Google (GOOG) of China”, the company is a leader in pushing AI services across its e-commerce platforms and has recently taken an unusual step that should put late-night merchandise salespersons on notice. On June 16, popular e-commerce hawker ‘personality’, Luo Yonghao decided to take the day off. Despite his ability to relax and not pander to the consuming masses across China, he generated more than 55 million yuan in gross merchandise value, without showing up.
How is this possible? Luo Yonghao used a digital human avatar of himself, who sat in for the well-known internet personality and messaging company owner, and wound up selling more than Luo Yonghao’s ‘real-person’ show in May. The first go-round of this digital avatar outsold the human original! Baidu’s Huiboxing digital human live broadcast technology created a character that was highly coordinated physically, able to make decisions, and able to complete specific tasks, in this case, selling things, well enough to outsell his human counterpart. The digital avatars were able to easily interact with each other and manage interactive Q&A sessions with consumers during the broadcast.
Baidu is using this successful and profitable promotion to convince brands that AI is not just a tool for reducing costs and increasing efficiency, but one that can also improve the user experience and more importantly sell more stuff, calling it a ‘new milestone, marking a new chapter in smart e-commerce’.
How is this possible? Luo Yonghao used a digital human avatar of himself, who sat in for the well-known internet personality and messaging company owner, and wound up selling more than Luo Yonghao’s ‘real-person’ show in May. The first go-round of this digital avatar outsold the human original! Baidu’s Huiboxing digital human live broadcast technology created a character that was highly coordinated physically, able to make decisions, and able to complete specific tasks, in this case, selling things, well enough to outsell his human counterpart. The digital avatars were able to easily interact with each other and manage interactive Q&A sessions with consumers during the broadcast.
Baidu is using this successful and profitable promotion to convince brands that AI is not just a tool for reducing costs and increasing efficiency, but one that can also improve the user experience and more importantly sell more stuff, calling it a ‘new milestone, marking a new chapter in smart e-commerce’.
While we understand that this was a special event and likely had a larger number of viewers than normal, it certain delivered just what the folks at Baidu had hoped for, and will likely serve as the cornerstone of their digital avatar marketing effort, and proof that Baidu’s long-time multi-modal approach to AI has paid off. Baidu noted that during the broadcast the AI queried its knowledge base 13,000 times and generated 97,000 words of product explanation content, with the two digital avatars performing more than 8,300 actions. The LLM devised the original ‘script’ for the show and then generated a multi-modal guide that created the interaction of voice and motion. The script is the basis for creating the distinct personalities of the digital avatars and can even create a personalize ‘language’, just as we humans might have that sets us apart from each other, with little nuances becoming recognizable and humanizing.
This was not an easy task, especially when typical model lip-sync videos are usually less than 60 seconds, but Baidu came prepared for an hour. The company has been adamant in its focus on helping others create Ai applications rather than providing its own applications, and it considers this ‘super useful’ for the e-commerce space, especially as the ‘live’ broadcast was watched by 13 million viewers, generated 3x the typical user interaction volume, 30% more viewing time and 150% more orders than the live broadcasts. Baidu states that the company’s original worry concerning e-commerce avatars was that the avatar would just recite the entire script which would cause viewers to abandon the broadcasts, but as the technology improved and the avatars began to react and respond to viewers, retailers began to show interest, culminating in what turned out to be a highly successful project.
Baidu has plans to double the number of the company’s top e-commerce anchors with digital humans and will invest 100 million yuan to subsidize small and medium enterprises to help them gain entrance to the digital human e-commerce business. While at this stage of the game, the idea is to make digital human salespeople as life-like as possible, there will come a day when not only will consumers tune in to make purchases, but will also expect to see these digital humans entertain and delight them. How about a 360° head-spin every time a product is sold or steam coming out of the avatar’s ears? Your average human salesman can’t do that.
This was not an easy task, especially when typical model lip-sync videos are usually less than 60 seconds, but Baidu came prepared for an hour. The company has been adamant in its focus on helping others create Ai applications rather than providing its own applications, and it considers this ‘super useful’ for the e-commerce space, especially as the ‘live’ broadcast was watched by 13 million viewers, generated 3x the typical user interaction volume, 30% more viewing time and 150% more orders than the live broadcasts. Baidu states that the company’s original worry concerning e-commerce avatars was that the avatar would just recite the entire script which would cause viewers to abandon the broadcasts, but as the technology improved and the avatars began to react and respond to viewers, retailers began to show interest, culminating in what turned out to be a highly successful project.
Baidu has plans to double the number of the company’s top e-commerce anchors with digital humans and will invest 100 million yuan to subsidize small and medium enterprises to help them gain entrance to the digital human e-commerce business. While at this stage of the game, the idea is to make digital human salespeople as life-like as possible, there will come a day when not only will consumers tune in to make purchases, but will also expect to see these digital humans entertain and delight them. How about a 360° head-spin every time a product is sold or steam coming out of the avatar’s ears? Your average human salesman can’t do that.
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