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This article centers on Ant Group's secret internal testing of an AI-powered version of Alipay. The product is currently only available to a very small group of beta users, Ant Group has not yet issued an official response, and the official launch date remains undetermined. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. The new AI-native Alipay features a completely redesigned interface that lets users submit requests via text or voice commands. It can directly complete daily consumer tasks such as hailing rides, ordering coffee, and ordering food delivery. The AI assistant is named "Abao" in Chinese.

2. With user authorization, Abao can also handle wealth management operations including purchasing mutual funds and managing investment accounts, enabling AI-powered coverage across the full spectrum of services from daily consumption to financial management.

3. China's top consumer super apps have already launched an AI upgrade race. Beyond Alipay, Tencent WeChat is also internally testing AI-enabled payment capabilities, making industry competition around intelligence increasingly intense.

Ant Group's testing of an AI-powered Alipay signals a new intelligence trend in the consumer services space, offering multiple key insights for brands, summarized below:

1. Shifting interaction trends: Future interactions between users and consumer services will transition from active search and manual selection to natural language command-based interaction. Brands need to adapt to this new logic in advance and adjust how they present their services.

2. Changing distribution channels: As a national-scale traffic platform, Alipay's AI transformation will restructure its existing service distribution logic. Customer acquisition entry points for brands will shift from fixed display pages to AI-powered proactive demand matching, requiring brands to align with the new entry rules early.

3. Shifting industry competition: Top Chinese internet platforms are collectively scaling up investment in AI services. Future competition in the consumer services track will see a full shift toward AI-driven upgrading, and brands need to seize this window to build out their positioning early and capture new traffic opportunities.

For platform sellers, the testing of AI-powered Alipay reveals a range of coming industry changes and new opportunities, outlined below:

1. New traffic opportunities: After AI restructures Alipay's service distribution logic, small and medium-sized sellers will gain more opportunities to be accurately matched with potential users, breaking the existing traffic monopoly held by large top merchants and unlocking new room for revenue growth.

2. Need for early operational adjustment: As users will access services via natural language commands going forward, sellers need to adjust the tagging system for their products and services to align with AI matching rules, in order to secure more exposure.

3. Clear industry signals: Top internet platforms are accelerating their AI transformation, and the pace of industry upgrading will continue to quicken. Sellers need to keep up with coming changes to technology and platform rules and make early preparations to avoid falling behind in future competition.

For manufacturing factories, the testing of AI-powered Alipay also delivers a range of valuable insights and new business opportunities, as follows:

1. Insights for product design and development: AI can aggregate users' fragmented personalized demands, which will greatly improve the efficiency of C2M (customer-to-manufacturer) custom production. Factories will be able to leverage AI platforms to access real user demand faster, adjust product design and production plans accordingly, and reduce inventory risk.

2. Insights for digital transformation: The AI upgrade of consumer-facing platforms will force supply chain players to speed up their own digital transformation. Only after completing their own digital upgrades can factories connect with the efficient demand matching enabled by platform AI and keep pace with industry changes.

3. New business opportunities: After AI empowers national-scale consumer platforms, it will give rise to many new consumption scenarios. Factories can capitalize on unmet demand in these new scenarios, develop new products tailored to the scenarios, and open up new growth tracks.

For internet industry service providers, this event reveals a clear industry trend and new business opportunities, outlined below:

1. Industry development trend: China's top consumer-facing internet platforms have already launched a full-scale AI transformation, moving AI from conceptual work to internal product testing. This round of upgrading will drive growth in service demand across the entire industrial chain, opening a new growth cycle for service providers.

2. Clear customer pain points: Large numbers of brands and sellers are unfamiliar with the new interaction and distribution rules of AI platforms, and lack the technical capabilities and operational experience to adapt to the new technology, creating a clear unmet demand for supporting services.

3. Business positioning direction: Service providers can build out capabilities in AI platform-related services including merchant operation, product tag optimization, AI interaction adaptation, and intelligent marketing early on. This will allow them to capture the industry opportunities brought by this round of platform AI upgrading and expand their business scope.

For all types of internet platform operators, Ant Group's testing of AI-powered Alipay offers a range of valuable industry insights, as follows:

1. Clear industry direction: China's super apps have officially launched an AI upgrading race. Beyond Alipay, Tencent WeChat has already started internal testing of AI-enabled capabilities. Artificial intelligence has become the core foundation of platform competitiveness going forward, and platforms that fail to upgrade will fall behind in competition.

2. Clear user demand: Users already have demand for AI-powered full-scenario services, covering daily consumption, financial management and many other fields. Platforms need to adapt to user demand for convenient, intelligent services and push forward with product redesign.

3. Actionable product development reference: Building an AI-native interface, supporting text and voice interaction, and connecting full-scenario services is a proven viable upgrading path. Platforms can follow the example of testing with a small closed beta group first to validate product performance and reduce the risk of full-scale launch.

For industry researchers, Ant Group's secret testing of an AI-powered Alipay reflects the latest developments in China's internet industry, with key takeaways outlined below:

1. New industry developments: China's top consumer-facing super internet platforms have moved AI from a conceptual stage to internal product testing, marking the official start of the implementation phase for AI in C-end user services. This signals that China's internet industry has officially entered a new AI-driven round of industrial upgrading.

2. Shifts in business models: AI restructures platforms' user interaction logic and service distribution logic. This may reshape the existing advertising and commission-based monetization models that platforms rely on, while AI-powered personalized value-added services will open up new monetization opportunities that warrant further in-depth research.

3. Shifts in industry landscape: AI capability has become a new core dimension of competition among incumbent top internet platforms, which will drive changes to the overall industry competitive landscape and trigger restructuring of the entire upstream and downstream service industry chain, creating many new research topics.