Would you trust AI with a medical consultation? JD.com has certainly convinced many. JD Health, the healthcare platform from the e-commerce giant, launched the Jingyi (京医) AI in January to assist with consultations and chemist tasks, and had served over 50 million users by the end of June. On 24 July, ahead of the World AI Conference (WAIC 2025), JD.com announced a major upgrade to its AI doctors.
Not only did JD.com upgrade its existing large language model (LLM)-based AI general practice (GP) doctors and chemists, but it also launched over 500 specialist AI entities, including dermatologists, psychiatrists and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) specialists. JD Health’s LLM solution was also selected as one of WAIC 2025’s recommended ESG innovation cases. It further announced that there will be over 1,000 AI doctors ready to assist on the JD Health platform by the end of the year.
Before this update, the GP and chemist AIs were generally seen as not too different from general-purpose AI chatbots in terms of giving medical advice. However, with the specialist entities now online, JD.com’s AI will have the speciality knowledge, clinical experience, cognitive pattern and expression habits based on real doctors, making them digital avatars of the physicians themselves. They can also help with medicine and supplement purchases on the platform and book check-up appointments.
Alongside JD.com, tech goliaths Alibaba and ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, are both investing in AI healthcare, with Alibaba’s “100 AI doctors” (百大AI名医) initiative and its “AI health manager” (AI健康管家) project, and ByteDance’s Xiaohe AI Doctor (小荷AI医生). However, JD Health has outpaced both with its revenue and profit. AI healthcare is one of the hottest sectors today and is worth continued monitoring.