--- title: China’s 618 festival is all-in on AI. Its shoppers are not. description: China's 618 mid-year shopping festival has become a large-scale test of AI in e-commerce, with Alibaba integrating its Qwen LLM into Taobao's... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/china-s-618-festival-is-all-in-on-ai-its-shoppers-are-not--cahllydus twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: China’s 618 festival is all-in on AI. Its shoppers are not. | daily.dev og:description: China's 618 mid-year shopping festival has become a large-scale test of AI in e-commerce, with Alibaba integrating its Qwen LLM into Taobao's... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/china-s-618-festival-is-all-in-on-ai-its-shoppers-are-not--cahllydus og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/CAhLlyDuS.png og:image:alt: China’s 618 festival is all-in on AI. Its shoppers are not. og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # China’s 618 festival is all-in on AI. Its shoppers are not. **[The Next Web](https://daily.dev/sources/tnw)** · 4 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary China's 618 mid-year shopping festival has become a large-scale test of AI in e-commerce, with Alibaba integrating its Qwen LLM into Taobao's four-billion-product catalogue for agentic shopping. While consumers embrace AI for price comparison and coupon hunting, they remain reluctant to let AI make purchase decisions or place orders autonomously. The gap reveals a structural challenge: platforms are leaning on AI partly because traditional discount-driven demand has weakened, but AI alone cannot resolve declining consumer trust, counterfeit goods disputes, and discounting fatigue. The festival offers an early real-world signal that shoppers want AI as a time-saving tool, not a delegated buyer. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [China leads the agentic commerce race as Alibaba, Meituan, and JD.com deploy AI shopping agents at scale](https://daily.dev/posts/china-leads-the-agentic-commerce-race-as-alibaba-meituan-and-jd-com-deploy-ai-shopping-agents-at-s-puvkpnmmy) · The Next Web · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Alibaba integrates Qwen AI with Taobao for end-to-end agentic shopping](https://daily.dev/posts/alibaba-integrates-qwen-ai-with-taobao-for-end-to-end-agentic-shopping-ennj0q3tn) · The Next Web · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [AI Trends to Watch In 2026](https://daily.dev/posts/ai-trends-to-watch-in-2026-0jbncjvbz) · eBay Tech · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#ai-agents](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-agents), [#ecommerce](https://daily.dev/tags/ecommerce), [#alibaba](https://daily.dev/tags/alibaba), [#qwen](https://daily.dev/tags/qwen) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/china-s-618-festival-is-all-in-on-ai-its-shoppers-are-not--cahllydus) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"China’s 618 festival is all-in on AI. 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