Trip.comExecutiveSeesHugeAIApplicationOpportunitiesinChina

China holds significant opportunities in artificial intelligence (AI) applications despite the advanced capabilities of foreign foundational models, according to a Trip.com Group Ltd. executive.

Amy Wei, senior product director at the online travel agency, shared the insights at the Caixin Summer Summit in Hong Kong on Friday.

The remarks highlight how Chinese companies are pivoting toward practical AI implementation and leveraging the country’s mature digital ecosystem to commercialize the technology.

Wei said China has unique advantages in AI implementation because its established e-commerce, mobile payment and lifestyle service networks provide the infrastructure needed for the technology to move beyond simple dialogue toward completing transactions. A massive user base and relatively high public acceptance of new technologies also create a strong environment for rapid application updates.

However, Wei noted that many domestic AI applications still have clear shortcomings, as many simply add basic chatbot functions without truly connecting to backend systems to solve real problems. She said Trip.com’s experience over the past three years shows that an AI application’s true value depends on how deeply it integrates with business operations and earns user trust.

In July 2023, Trip.com launched Wendao, a travel-focused large language model designed to help users plan itineraries. James Liang Jianzhang, the company’s co-founder and executive chairman, said at the time that the model was trained on about 20 billion pieces of high-quality travel data, combined with the company’s real-time structured data and historical search systems.

Wei said the vast volume of user interactions provides critical feedback for continuously optimizing AI products. She emphasized that the current bottleneck for AI development is no longer a model’s basic presentation capabilities but its ability to deeply integrate with business systems to successfully complete tasks and deliver results in real-world scenarios.

Contact editor Wang Xintong (xintongwang@caixin.com)