Artificial intelligence has become one of the most prominent features of China’s 2026 Singles’ Day shopping festival, as major e-commerce platforms deploy new technologies to attract consumers and improve online shopping experiences.

The annual retail event, which has evolved from a single-day promotion into an extended shopping festival, is providing a major commercial testing ground for AI-powered shopping assistants, automated product recommendations, virtual fitting tools and digital services.

Companies including Alibaba, JD.com and PDD Holdings are increasingly integrating AI into their platforms to help customers identify products, compare prices, discover promotions and complete purchases.

Alibaba’s Tmall and Taobao platforms have introduced AI-powered research tools and virtual clothing try-ons. These services allow shoppers to explore products and make purchasing decisions without relying exclusively on conventional product listings or manual searches.

The growing popularity of AI shopping assistants is also evident on JD.com. The company said its AI assistant, Dongdong, attracted nearly 80 million users seeking shopping advice during this year’s Singles’ Day campaign, more than three times the number recorded during the previous year’s event.

AI-powered shopping is also gaining traction on Douyin, China’s short-video and social commerce platform. According to data from WPIC Marketing + Technologies, chatbot links generated approximately 5 per cent of purchases on the platform in October. For considered purchases such as supplements, the proportion exceeded 20 per cent.

Jacob Cooke, chief executive of the research firm, said: “This is still a very new gateway and discovery channel,”

He added: “I expect it to account for a growing share of direct purchases, comparable to livestreaming or social commerce.”

However, the increasing use of AI in online shopping has raised questions about how algorithms influence product visibility and consumer choice.

Ben Cavender, managing director at Shanghai-based China Market Research Group, said: “Some brands benefit more based on how the platforms are tuned or how the brands are pricing their products,”

He warned that some businesses could lose visibility if shoppers increasingly depend on AI assistants to select products rather than browsing conventional search results.

He added: “if they are no longer showing up in product searches because the consumer is defaulting to letting an AI assistant do the ‘shopping’,”

The technology is also expanding beyond online retail. AI-enabled toys, companion robots and other consumer devices are attracting growing interest. Alibaba reported that AI toys had generated more than 100 million yuan in sales on its platforms within a year of becoming a new product category.

Sales of AI companion robots also increased nearly fivefold year-on-year in the second half of October, according to the company.

Another rapidly expanding market involves AI tokens, which consumers purchase to access computing resources and use artificial intelligence models. Tmall reported that sales of AI tokens increased by more than 700 per cent between October 15 and November 5 compared with the preceding promotional period.

The growing interest in AI is not limited to consumers. Retailers are using the technology to improve marketing, automate customer service and analyse purchasing behaviour.

Nevertheless, the technology’s ability to increase total consumer spending remains uncertain. AI may make shopping more convenient, but it cannot necessarily overcome broader economic pressures affecting household budgets.

The festival therefore offers an important indication of how Chinese technology companies are attempting to turn artificial intelligence into a commercially viable part of everyday life.