On 16 April, Liu Qiangdong, the founder of JD.com, made his debut in the form of a “digital human” on the JD.com App’s home appliances and JD.com supermarkets’ livestream rooms. Within one minute of the livestream’s initiation, the viewers in the two rooms reached 2,992 and 2,243 respectively. The livestream continued for approximately half an hour, accumulating a total viewership of over ten million across both rooms.
During the livestream, the digital human of Liu Qiangdong called himself “Big brother Dong” and consumers as “brothers.” The virtual human accurately portrayed Liu Qiangdong’s speech patterns, including his rapid speech and continuous tone, as well as reproducing his habitual gestures such as rubbing fingers and tilting his head. Additionally, Liu Qiangdong’s digital human engaged with consumers by asking questions and interacting with them.
The Liu Qiangdong digital human is an AI creation developed by JD.com’s Yanxi team. According to the technical team, creating a realistic virtual human involved first capturing Liu Qiangdong’s voice characteristics and then synthesising an artificial voice using the Yanxi voice model. During the Double 11 shopping festival, Yanxi virtual hosts were deployed in over 4,000 brands’ livestream rooms to facilitate product promotions.
E-commerce industry data indicates that livestreams with product promotions had a penetration rate of approximately 31.9% in 2023, becoming a prevalent form of retailing. However, the cost of a livestream can be substantial, with expenses reaching tens of thousands of Yuan (approx. 1,400 USD) per session, resulting in many livestream platforms operating at a loss. Liu Zhuli, the head of Wondershare’s digital human operations in Hunan, stated that employing digital persona anchors can significantly reduce livestream costs. For instance, Wondershare’s digital human anchor service offers an annual fee starting at around 50,000 Yuan (approx. 6,909 USD).
In terms of strategy, JD.com has recently accelerated its investments in the livestream sector. On 10 April, JD.com announced a cash investment of 1 billion Yuan (approx. 13.8 million USD) along with incentives worth 1 billion in online traffic to attract more original creators and high-quality content organidations, as well as to expand its presence in short video content creation.
