Alibaba’s Taobao launches AI-powered English version in Singapore

Singapore — Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba‘s Taobao shopping app topped the Apple App Store charts in Singapore after releasing an English version on Tuesday — thanks to translations powered by artificial intelligence.

That’s according to Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm whose data shows Taobao shot to first place in Apple’s Singapore App Store across all categories, as of Sept. 11. On Tuesday, the day the English-language version was announced, the app rose from fifth to first place in the shopping category.

Prior to this, the Taobao app had still enjoyed relative popularity and was consistently ranked in the top ten shopping apps for iPhone users from mid-August onwards, according to Sensor Tower.

The new update “highlights Taobao’s dedication to serving its Singapore users, who have shown a strong desire for an English-language interface, reflecting their diverse language fluency,” Alibaba said in a press release Tuesday. It did not elaborate on the AI translation features. The company has its own AI model.

The release said the new platform “enhances accessibility for non-Chinese users, eliminating their need for manual translations that previously made shopping less convenient for them.”

Taobao and Tmall are Alibaba’s biggest source of revenue by far, but to date have primarily sold to people in China using a Chinese-language interface. Taobao and Tmall Group’s revenue for the quarter ended June 30 was 26.55 billion yuan ($3.65 billion), a 6% increase year-on-year.

Alibaba has in recent years has also sought to ramp up its overseas e-commerce business with platforms such as Alibaba.com and AliExpress.

Singapore is the first market where Taobao will introduce this new update, alongside the city-state’s neighbor, Malaysia, according to Alibaba.

As early as last year, Singaporean Taobao users had previously made guides on how to purchase clothes, furniture and lifestyle items from Taobao. These video guides were posted on the ByteDance-owned TikTok platform, another Chinese app. Several videos amassed more than 10,000 views, with one accumulating 105,000 views.

Alibaba’s latest move reflects the growing trend of Chinese businesses striving to expand globally, and using Singapore as a cultural testbed to further their ambitions to reach the Western market.

Last week, consulting firm Bain and Company said in their study of Asia Pacific-headquartered consumer goods companies that Chinese companies have a significant advantage versus South Korean and Japanese companies in the race to go global: the large ethnic Chinese diaspora settled outside of mainland China.

“There are many of these Chinese companies that have really ambitious global mindsets and are able to take the sort of entrepreneurial, fast-innovation capability that they built domestically and use that to create new positions overseas,” David Zehner, senior partner at Bain, previously told CNBC.

According to a government report as of end-June 2023, almost three-quarters of Singapore’s 5.92 million-strong nation is of Chinese descent. About 20% of Malaysia’s population is ethnically Chinese.

Taobao users in Singapore and Malaysia can buy a range of products — from electronics, to shoes, to kitchen appliances — and have it shipped to their doorstep for a small shipping fee. Prices are listed in yuan.

The new version of Taobao can convert prices from yuan to the Singapore dollar, and product descriptions will also be available in English.

But as of Thursday, the user experience was far from perfect.

A check by CNBC found that prices were not converted from yuan to Singapore dollars despite changing currency display options. Translations were also quite literal. However, the English translation option was also available for product reviews.

Singapore-based social media users were quick to highlight the new features, despite their imperfections.

A TikTok by an individual user one day after the announcement showed users how to change the Taobao app display to English. The video garnered 947,000 views in a day.

Sensor Tower told CNBC that Taobao’s average monthly active users in Singapore reached 167,000 in the third quarter of 2024.