An avatar of JD founder Richard Liu participated in its third livestreaming show on Monday as part of a promotional event for this year’s World Book Day. Although the virtual Liu’s nearly 40-minute-long slot made for only a short section of the 11-hour-long e-commerce event, its appearance still suggests that the company sees use of the avatar as a headline- and hype-generating strategy as it looks to boost consumption on its platforms. 

Why it matters: As JD gears up for June’s 618 event, China’s second-largest shopping festival, the attempt to introduce highly life-like digital personalities as sales anchors aims to reduce merchants’ operational costs and compete against rival platforms’ more-established human-hosted livestreams.

• The e-commerce giant will reportedly offer free services to merchants to try avatar-based livestreams during 618.

Details: “I am ‘procurement and sales manager Brother Dong,’” the digital Liu stated as part of Monday’s livestream. The avatar’s latest appearance featured a multi-camera set-up and added an interactive session after previous shows were criticized for its mechanical pronouncements and a lack of interaction with audiences.

• Liu’s avatar introduced five sets of books during the show, including China’s four classical masterpieces, detailing his personal reasons for recommending the novels and highlighting their “price competitiveness” on JD. Each book set was priced at less than 50% of the regular price if viewers bought through links showcased on the left of the screen.
• JD has received “lots of” cooperation inquiries from merchants and brands after Liu debuted his livestreaming avatar last week, according to the chief algorithm officer of JD Cloud’s own large language model ChatRhino, which powers the virtual Liu. Some CEOs also plan to collaborate in bringing their avatars to live shows, the executive added in an interview with China media outlet Yicai.

Context: Earlier this month, JD announced a RMB 1 billion investment, awarded in cash, to incentivize content creators in short videos and livestreaming, aiming to drive the development of content creation on its platform.