3.82 million people online in 5 minutes, is Liu Qiangdong's AI clone the antidote to JD Live?

Recently, JD.com founder Liu Qiangdong's AI digital human made its first live broadcast, with 3.217 million people online within three minutes of the broadcast. Let's take a look at the details~

01

On April 15, the WeChat official account of JD Blackboard announced that JD’s “No. 1 Procurement and Sales” Dong Ge AI digital person will be live streaming, and the first live broadcast time is scheduled for 6:18 pm on April 16.

According to JD.com, Liu Qiangdong, the founder and chairman of JD.com, will "transform" into an AI digital person "Purchasing and Sales Dong Ge" and share his experiences and insights on food, reading, etc. in the live broadcast room. He will also appear in the purchasing and sales live broadcast rooms of JD.com's home appliances and home furnishings and JD.com's supermarkets.

It is reported that, unlike other expert anchors, JD.com's procurement and sales live broadcast does not charge slot fees or expert commissions. The "Procurement and Sales Dongge AI Digital Human" uses JD Cloud Yanxi's self-developed AI-driven large-scale digital human technology, and is also the first digital human live broadcast by the founder of a major Internet company in the industry.

On April 16, Yilan Business entered the JD.com procurement and sales live broadcast room through the browsing interface of the JD.com APP homepage on time. Before Liu Qiangdong's digital person started broadcasting, the number of people online in the live broadcast room had exceeded 2 million. Three minutes after the broadcast, the number of people online reached 3.217 million, and five minutes after the broadcast, the number of people online reached 3.823 million.

The first batch of products promoted by Liu Qiangdong's digital person are agricultural products including Jingxiansheng edible raw eggs, Telunsu milk, and October Rice Field Corn.

02

Yilan Business observed that in this live broadcast, Liu Qiangdong's AI digital avatar was almost indistinguishable from the real person in terms of voice and image. The digital person's tone was more monotonous than the real person, and there are still shortcomings in emotional expression.

In the view of Yilan Business, short videos and live broadcasts have become the main channels for consumers to shop online, and JD.com is increasingly eager to step up its layout in these two businesses.

According to the latest "China Internet Audio-Visual Development Research Report (2024)", 71.2% of the respondents shop online because of watching short videos and live broadcasts, and more than 40% of Internet users believe that short videos and live broadcasts are their main consumption channels. Content consumption is becoming a key track for major platforms to compete for.

In this context, JD.com, which has made its fortune through shelf e-commerce, does not have the short video and live streaming soil of Douyin and Kuaishou, nor the top influencers of Taobao Live. If it wants to grab more traffic in these two areas, it naturally has to find another way.

Yilan Business observed that JD.com has already started its layout in the content ecosystem. In terms of video content, JD.com began to focus on "personal testing" last year. Internal data shows that tens of thousands of experts have created tens of millions of videos around "personal trial + evaluation", with a year-on-year increase of 300% in terms of orders, user scale, and duration. In the first quarter of this year, it still grew at a year-on-year rate of 100%.

03

According to multiple media reports, JD.com is currently actively preparing to incubate top talents and plans to select the top 100 talents by the end of the year. It has invested hundreds of millions of cash in the talent reserve stage alone.

On April 10, JD.com announced that it would invest 1 billion in short videos and 1 billion traffic as rewards. The person in charge of JD.com's content ecology revealed that excellent video creators are an important force in promoting the prosperity of the content ecology. In order to recruit more outstanding talents and institutions to join, JD.com has offered 1 billion in cash and 1 billion traffic as rewards to stimulate their creative enthusiasm and produce more professional and interesting content.

Yilan Business believes that incubating its own talents, investing heavily in short videos, and Liu Qiangdong's digital human live broadcast can all be understood as JD.com's efforts to make up for its shortcomings. At present, Taobao's Li Jiaqi, Douyin's Xiao Yangge, and Kuaishou's Simba, each platform has its own "leading actress". As the influence of super-head anchors has become apparent in recent years, JD.com also wants to have its own head anchor.

Judging from the results, it is extremely difficult to cultivate another anchor in the first tier of traffic. Previously, Luo Yonghao also joined JD.com to start live broadcasting, and brought JD.com a good result of 150 million in a single game. However, Luo Yonghao is not JD.com's own anchor after all, and such results cannot be normalized in JD.com's live broadcast room.

04

So, can Liu Qiangdong’s “personal” live broadcast this time help JD.com solve the problem of lack of top anchors?

Zhan Junhao, a well-known strategic positioning expert and founder of Fujian Huace Brand Positioning Consulting, told "Yi Lan Business" that JD.com's decision to use "Liu Qiangdong Digital Human" for live broadcasts may be based on many considerations, and resolving the lack of super heads is only one of them.

Zhan Junhao believes that, on the one hand, JD.com's use of "Liu Qiangdong Digital Human" for live broadcasting is an attempt to explore new marketing models and improve user experience. On the other hand, Liu Qiangdong's digital human created using AI technology can continue Liu Qiangdong's personal image and influence, attract more users' attention and participation, and further enhance JD.com's brand awareness and user stickiness.

Pan Jun, director of commodity strategy consulting at a world-renowned consulting firm, believes that using Liu Qiangdong's digital human for live broadcasting may help alleviate the problem of lack of super heads, as it may bring more traffic and attention to the platform. However, this is not the only solution, and other e-commerce platforms may also adopt similar strategies to deal with the problem of lack of super heads. The core value of all live broadcasts lies in "credit", which mainly depends on consumers' credit assessment of this method.

Can the normalization of digital human live broadcasts save JD.com's live broadcast room? Yilan Business found that there are few successful cases of AI digital human live broadcasts in the industry that have become a methodology. Platforms such as Douyin prefer 3D virtual digital humans. For example, the 24-hour digital human live broadcast room based on real people still faces compliance issues on Douyin and Kuaishou. From the perspective of some companies, it has more of an effect of reducing costs, and whether it can increase efficiency remains to be seen.

Overall, Liu Qiangdong's digital person live broadcast is a brand new attempt for Internet giants competing for e-commerce. In the view of Cui Lili, professor of the Digital Economy Department of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics and director of the Digital Business Research Center, "founder live broadcast" itself is a model. However, the affinity of digital people is limited, and the long-term effect still needs time to prove.

Author: Li Yan WeChat public account: Yilan Business