Alibaba Group has announced the first large-scale deployment of generative AI across its Taobao and Tmall e-commerce platforms for the 2025 11.11 Global Shopping Festival, which began on October 15. The company has integrated its Qwen large language models (LLMs) into core functions like search and recommendation engines to better understand complex conversational queries and improve product discovery. This AI integration has already resulted in significant improvements, including a double-digit increase in result relevance for complex searches and a similar lift in click-through rates for some recommendation scenarios. Additionally, Alibaba has upgraded its AI toolkit for the millions of merchants on its platforms, providing a virtual "AI team" to help create marketing materials, including a new feature that generates videos from static images. This initiative is part of Alibaba's broader strategy to transform its businesses with artificial intelligence, supported by a planned US$53 billion investment in AI infrastructure.