'World's supermarket' embraces era of AI

HANGZHOU - "One, two, three, four, five," Fu Jiangyan, who owns a sock shop in East China's Yiwu, repeats the numbers to her phone camera. With the help of artificial intelligence (AI) tools, videos in which she appears to introduce products to potential customers fluently in 36 languages are ready for her Facebook account instantly.

Chinagoods is a comprehensive digital services platform developed by the market administration of Yiwu, an international hub for small commodity production and trade.

The platform has integrated AI to create a variety of products, assisting businesses to develop online marketing tools and connect with international trade.

Fu uses DeepSeek, one such AI tool, to help her write video scripts, and a video generation app to create videos that match the movement of her lips and the background music to the languages and preferences of customers in different regions.

Fu has been working in sock sales in Yiwu for 20 years. In addition to China, she also has clients in the Middle East, South America and Africa. Thanks to efficient AI tools that she has used to overcome language barriers, her foreign trade channels have been broadened significantly.

"My most-viewed video on Facebook has received 54,000 views," she said with clear excitement.

After the integration of DeepSeek, the platform's various AI applications have significantly improved functionalities such as content generation, video creation, image design and multilingual response, according to Lou Qinfeng, technical director of the Yiwu small commodity market's big data company.

Sun Lingyan from Chinagoods has been busy going around the market teaching merchants how to use the platform's app.

"If merchants have not yet mastered AI, it is not an exaggeration to say that they may not even be able to earn a living in the future of business. Therefore, we want to enable market vendors to utilize AI tools as naturally as they would use a calculator," she said.

After training, many merchants have acquired new skills and secured tangible orders.

Toy vendor Sun Lijuan has reduced her product catalog design costs, which previously required outsourcing, to zero. After an AI-generated video she made was uploaded to overseas social media platforms, it garnered more than 100,000 views and she received an order from a Polish client for 20,000 dolls.

"Even without any professional design or filming background, it is possible to generate creative content quickly, significantly accelerating business progress," Sun said.

Digital bosses, AI salespeople and AI assistants are now used widely in market trade in Yiwu. The latest data shows that approximately 30,000 merchants are currently using various AI tools for business on a regular basis. AI applications developed independently by Yiwu have been used in excess of 1 billion times.

"We always use whatever the most powerful AI model is. As the 'world's supermarket,' Yiwu aims to keep pace with cutting-edge technology, embrace AI, and provide greater convenience and enhance efficiency for merchants," Lou said.