Alibaba Uses Winter Olympics To Demonstrate Potential Of Virtual Influencers

Meet Dong Dong – she’s become a familiar face on Alibababs’s TaoBoa Live platform during the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, hosting livestreams, selling Olympics merch, dancing and sharing sports trivia. She has all the attributes of any other influencer except for one thing — she’s not real.

Dong Dong is a computer-generated human — a “virtual idol” as they are called in China — created by Alibaba’s technology research arm DAMO Academy. Her name means “winter” in Mandarin, and according to Alibaba she is a 22-year-old digital woman who is passionate about winter sports. Using cloud-based AI technology, Dong Dong has been equipped with “human-like features, a sparkling personality and the capability to interact with audiences naturally.” Read more at Retail TouchPoints.