Alibaba Unveils Accio To Boost Small Biz Sourcing

Alibaba’s Group Holdings’ international eCommerce group announced a new artificial intelligence (AI) sourcing tool, Accio, at the Web Summit 2024 conference on November 12. Introduced by Kuo Zhang, president of Alibaba.com and vice president of Alibaba International, the new technology demonstrates the company’s investment in AI. The Accio retail solution is designed to streamline sourcing for business-to-business (B2B) eCommerce sellers and entrepreneurs based in Europe and the Americas. The web-based tool will initially support English, German, French, Portuguese, and Spanish languages.

The name Accio comes from the Latin word for “I summon, invite, call forth, send for,” Zhang said, mentioning that it also served as the name of a popular spell cast by characters in the Harry Potter fantasy series. “In Accio,” he said, “you can summon expertise, information, manufacturers, and products.”

In addition to other publicly available information, Accio pulls data from the 50 million businesses listed on Alibaba.com, the company’s platform for B2B buyers outside of China. Zhang said that Accio incorporates one billion product listings and documents covering industries across more than 100 markets.

Accio is made of three separate, related tools that will integrate AI into eCommerce businesses: 

A B2B sourcing engine

A dynamic B2B wiki called Accio Page

An end-to-end eCommerce platform called Accio Agent 

When users search for products using either text or an image, the platform’s sourcing engine indexes use AI to interpret their intentions and serve more tailored search results. This sourcing engine is made possible by Accio Page, an AI-powered wiki in which every stock-keeping unit (SKU) has a dedicated page that compiles verified information to create a comprehensive listing. This information is sourced from data provided by the 50 million businesses listed on the Alibaba platform and publicly available information.

Business owners can also use Accio Page to subscribe to intelligent automated updates about products and industries, and AI-enabled Accio Agent, which helps subject matter experts follow up on inquiries, payments, and after-sales support. When users enter a query into the chatbot window, Accio Agent scans the wiki page and retrieves the relevant information. It can also provide an estimate for quantified questions about delivery times and shipping costs, based on real-time data.

Zhang said that Accio leverages generative AI technology from Alibaba’s large language model (LLM), Tongyi Qianwen. However, he did not confirm whether Accio also uses other companies’ AI tools.
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