(Yicai) July 25 -- Chinese merchants on cross-border e-commerce platforms are actively embracing artificial intelligence technologies as they bring not only massive changes but also new challenges.

Chinese cross-border merchant Qian Dazhu told Yicai that his company now uses AI to generate pictures and introductions for products to be uploaded online on a daily basis. This way, his team can save much translating and editing time, and he could focus on opening more stores, Qian noted.

With the rapid increase in the number of stores and their performance, employees require higher salaries, so Qian began to reorganize its staff by creating teams responsible for the operation of stores, while inventory, logistics, and funding duties were transferred to the head office.

The number of merchants using AI to sell products on cross-border e-commerce platforms has surged since February this year, thanks to the free accessibility to large language models, such as Baidu's Ernie Bot, Alibaba Group Holding's Qwen, and Moonshot AI's Kimi Chat, Qian pointed out.

Besides creating product pages, merchants also use AI to reply to emails and for customer service and advertisement purposes.

In the past, advertising agencies needed to create different content based on the language, culture, and preferences of the target market, which required efforts from large teams, said Wu Ying, chief executive and general manager at online marketer Easy Click Worldwide Network Technology.

Nowadays, AI's emergence visibly increased the efficiency of generating advertising materials, Wu noted, adding that in the future, AI will also participate more in advertising bidding and input effects.

With AI's broader applications in the cross-border e-commerce industry, the competition will increase to a new level, Qian predicted. In fact, he constantly looks for new technologies and product releases, as well as interest rate cuts, presidential elections, and geopolitical changes, to be ready for anything.

Editors: Zhang Yushuo, Futura Costaglione