Alibaba International has officially launched Alibaba International Marco (“Marco”), an advanced AI solution designed to reshape the landscape of global e-commerce.

The company’s AI business team developed Marco in 2024 with a clear mission: to strengthen cross-border trade for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). By handling more than 60 tasks across marketing, marketplace compliance, and customer service, Marco empowers merchants across the Alibaba ecosystem to operate more efficiently. The solution supports over 40 languages and provides capabilities such as product detail translation, AI-powered content generation, and image editing. Importantly, Marco delivers these services at a lower cost than leading competitors while maintaining high performance.

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Surging Global Adoption

Alibaba International has witnessed unprecedented adoption of its AI solutions, fueled largely by Marco. As of July 2025, Chinese merchants on its platforms were making over one billion daily API calls to its AI systems, an astounding 1,000-fold increase compared to just one million daily calls in 2023. Moreover, all Alibaba International e-commerce marketplaces have fully integrated AI, extending the same tools to global merchants participating in cross-border trade.

Several features are driving this rapid adoption, including:

  • Creative Image Generation: Producing multiple visual variations from a single source image
  • AI-Generated Listings: Automatically creating product details directly from images
  • Marketing Content Creation: Delivering promotional text tailored to merchants’ needs

A significant upgrade to Marco’s translation technology in late 2024 boosted user satisfaction by 30% across major European languages. Today, Marco generates around 40% of search-optimized product descriptions across Alibaba International’s platforms, a figure projected to surpass 50% soon.

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Expanding the AI Ecosystem

Alibaba International has also opened Marco’s technology to Chinese e-commerce platforms beyond its own ecosystem, which sparked a 23x increase in API calls. Alongside this expansion, the company introduced three dedicated AI agents:

  • Intelligent Refund Agent – Reduces costs by 15% by analyzing market insights to recommend optimal refund solutions
  • HS Code Agent – Automates customs classification with 23% greater accuracy
  • Merchant Recruitment Agent – Identifies and qualifies potential sellers, nearly doubling email lead conversion rates

Reflecting on this milestone, Kaifu Zhang, Vice President and Head of the AI business team at Alibaba International, said: “The past year has been a game changer for the use of AI to enhance cross-border e-commerce. Our approach combines detailed, scenario-specific data with a continuous learning loop to deliver increasingly powerful problem-solving capabilities. We are evolving from standalone generative models to dedicated AI agents that can efficiently address a wider range of complex business challenges for merchants engaged in cross-border trade around the world.”

Currently, some of these AI solutions are also available to partners through Aidge, Alibaba International’s open AI platform, signaling the company’s commitment to making advanced e-commerce technology more accessible worldwide.

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