(Yicai) April 16 -- Chinese e-commerce giant JD.Com, which said last week that it will invest CNY1 billion (USD138.2 million) to attract video creators, is rolling out a digital version of its founder and chairman to draw more attention to its livestreaming activities.

Liu Qiangdong will make his virtual live sales debut today, appearing simultaneously in two studios, one for home appliances and another for groceries, on the JD.com app, the Beijing-based firm said yesterday in a preview of live sales events on its WeChat account.

JD.com also released a short trailer less than one-minute long in which a digital Liu, powered by the firm’s large language model Yanxi, introduced the two livestreaming activities.

This is the latest move in a concerted drive to spice up its online content. Just last week JD.com said it will offer CNY1 billion (USD140 million) in incentives to attract more video creators and multi-channel networks. It will provide cash subsidies to video influencers in over 20 fields, including computers, consumer electronics, household appliances, fashion and cars. Each creator can get up to CNY30,000 (USD4,145).

There are many reasons why JD.com is choosing to focus on content production, Zhang Yi, chief executive officer of market research firm iiMedia Consulting, told Yicai. For one, there is growing demand among netizens for short videos and live broadcasts, which have become an important channel to attract users and promote consumption. But the use of digital humans in livestreamed e-commerce is unique to JD.com.

The firm has been leveraging Yanxi, which was released in July last year, across its product range. The AI tool can help generate scripts, organize products and design the studio’s visual effects. As a result, a virtual host costs less than a tenth of that of a human anchor, the firm said previously.

China’s virtual host market will quadruple by 2025 from 2022 to CNY48.1 billion (USD6.6 billion), according to Hong Kong-based iiMedia. This will drive the scale of upstream and downstream industries to expand three-and-a-half times.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Kim Taylor