"From product release, marketing transformation to customer reception, enterprise management and other aspects of the cross-border platform merchant business, with the artificial intelligence (AI) and other new technologies have been applied, related enterprises, especially small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises deeply feel the improvement of operational efficiency and cost reduction." At the 2023 SME Digital Foreign Trade Summit Forum held on August 9, Alibaba International Station merchant product leader Lin Howe said.

From the comprehensive upgrade of OKKI, the foreign trade business intelligent workbench under Alibaba's international station, which aims to use AI technology to help small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises manage orders and customers more efficiently, to TikTok's testing of the AI chatbot "Tako", to eBay's launch of the AI-based description generator that automatically generates descriptions based on the content of the title and item entered by the user, and so on, eBay has launched a description generator based on artificial intelligence. AI-based description generator launched by eBay, which can automatically generate a long text description based on the user's input such as title and item ...... This year, AI and other new technologies are becoming a common choice for major cross-border platforms to focus on layout. But how is the application of AI in the foreign trade scene? At the scene of the forum, Alibaba International Station for the first time fully demonstrated to the media.

To foreign trade merchants daily most conventional release of goods operations, for example, in general, merchants will release a daily average of 31 new products, each single product release need to modify the photo, upload the photo, refine the keywords, write the text of the promotion, etc., on average, the release time of each single product will be more than 10 minutes. From this calculation, merchants spend five or six hours a day on the release of products, in addition to investing a lot of shooting, artwork and other costs.

"The purpose of introducing new technologies such as AI is to make foreign trade business easier." Lin Hao introduced, in terms of operational efficiency, AI technology can provide title optimization, image processing, text translation, video processing and other functions for the merchant's commodity release session. Merchants to the relevant parameters provided to the system, at most, only a few dozen seconds to complete the release of goods, the efficiency of a geometric progression of enhancement, the relevant cost will also be significantly compressed.

Not only that, according to the on-site demonstration, the reporter found that in the future in the cross-border e-commerce merchant's workbench, only need to upload a merchandise map, can be generated with a key to the white background or with the relevant scene of the photo. In terms of video, merchants also only need to provide a basic version of the video, will soon be able to generate an increase in the selling point of the subtitle and has a different country voice of the intelligent explanation of the video.

Lv Daliang, spokesman for the General Administration of Customs (GAC) and director of the Department of Statistics and Analysis, introduced at a press conference held by the State Council Information Office on July 13, that a total of 540,000 foreign trade enterprises in China had import and export records in the first half of the year, an increase of 6.9% year-on-year. Among them, small and medium-sized enterprises, mainly small and medium-sized enterprises, vibrant private enterprises continue to expand, an increase of 8.3% year-on-year.

Ali international station data show that this year, small and medium-sized enterprises in the platform to open the proportion of digital foreign trade business has also increased significantly, in the second quarter of this year, including Shanghai, Jiangsu, Anhui, including the opening of the international station of the East China region, the number of new merchants increased by as much as 31.7% year-on-year growth rate; 5, June, the number of new merchants stationed in the international station of zhejiang have achieved double-digit growth, in June, the ring of the growth rate reached 45%. Many of these new merchants are start-ups, domestic to foreign trade or offline to online SMEs. The new procurement trends presented by foreign buyers and the empowerment of AI and other new technologies have also provided these enterprises with a development "gas pedal".

According to Ali International Station buyer business department head Lu Jia revealed that she intensively visited a large number of North American buyers in March and April, found that under the influence of inflation, local buyers pay more attention to cost control and risk. At the same time, compared with three years ago, currently in the overseas market, young people are becoming the main group of buyers, they have a stronger acceptance of the form of digital foreign trade, but also more buyers began to borrow cross-border live broadcasting, AI and other new technologies to carry out business. In addition, due to more accustomed to and hope to continue the home office mode, many overseas buyers have become less loyal to suppliers contacted offline, which also brings new business opportunities for more small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises.

Some small and medium-sized Chinese merchants have also made a breakthrough in the process of penetrating overseas markets with new trends and technologies surging from digital foreign trade. "In 2021, another partner and I founded Free Cheng Technology in a 10-square-meter apartment, hoping to find a place through the online platform." Fang Zefu, the founder of Shenzhen Wucheng Technology, which mainly exports gaming supporting products, told International Business Daily, "Through Ali International Station, a digital foreign trade 'fast ship to sea', we have been conducting our business by taking orders and then doing it again, keeping zero inventory, light assets, and a very healthy cash flow. Even under the impact of high overseas inventory in the consumer electronics category in 2022, Free into technology still maintains a five or six times growth rate. This year, the company's customer orders and online inquiries are still maintaining rapid growth, and it is expected that by the end of the year revenue will realize a 2~3 times growth."

By continuing to focus on overseas market trends, Fang Zef found that many foreign buyers have changed their purchasing habits. "In the past, business was mostly about large foreign buyers docking large domestic factories, but now it's more about small and medium-sized overseas entrepreneurs and KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) docking small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises. At the same time, through the empowerment of AI and big data, the entrepreneurial threshold for participating in foreign trade is getting lower and lower, which also brings more opportunities to us entrepreneurs and practitioners who rely on cross-border platforms."

"I can say that in the process of trying AI technology to empower my daily work, it always surprises me." Fang Zefu said, "For example, although my English is quite good, when I receive emails and contracts from buyers, there is reading inertia due to the fact that it is not my native language, and I need to spend time translating. Through the use of AI technology, not only can I complete email replies in a very short period of time, but also quickly extract the main points of the contract text, and also get support in selecting and organizing goods, maintaining with customers, etc., with a significant increase in efficiency."

Zhu Qiucheng, CEO of Ningbo New Oriental Industry and Trade Co Ltd, said that AI combined with cross-border e-commerce platforms is a general trend, and with the continuous innovation of AI technology, cross-border e-commerce companies can realize more efficient and smarter operations and achieve the purpose of reducing costs and increasing efficiency, and create greater value for sellers. "At present, cross-border e-commerce platforms use AI tools to cover aspects including picture design, marketing, pre-sale and after-sale operations, SARS construction, etc., while the ability to continuously update products through AI will continue to improve the efficiency of merchants."

In the view of Zhang Zhouping, director and senior analyst of the B2B and cross-border e-commerce department of the Nethersole E-commerce Research Center, AI technology will bring four major impacts to the cross-border e-commerce industry: one is to improve operational efficiency, by helping cross-border e-commerce enterprises automate their business processes and decision-making, reduce labor costs and error rates, and improve efficiency and precision; the second is personalized recommendation, based on the user's browsing and purchasing history, automated recommend products that meet users' interests and needs, and improve user conversion rate and loyalty; three is to enhance product analysis capabilities, by helping cross-border e-commerce enterprises to automate the analysis and prediction of commodity inventory, sales and competition, to help enterprises optimize the purchase and sales strategy; four is to optimize the logistics and warehousing, AI can help cross-border e-commerce enterprises to optimize the logistics and warehousing management process, such as route planning, transportation mode selection, inventory management, etc., to improve transaction efficiency and customer experience. "In the new era of AI, relevant enterprises should lay out as early as possible, seize and utilize advanced intelligent tools to improve their competitiveness in the new generation."