Bot and Sold

For over 20 years, Fu has run a sock business at Yiwu International Trade Market, the country’s largest hub for factory-direct consumer goods. Though she has created promotional video content for several years, Fu is now using tools on the market’s official e-commerce platform Chinagoods – which integrates the Hangzhou-developed AI model – to expand her business at minimal cost.　

She simply provides keywords and usage scenarios, and the model generates video scripts. Fu videos herself reading the script in Chinese, and the platform immediately generates dozens of versions where she appears reading the same script in different languages.　

After the phrase “A Yiwu seller used DeepSeek to sell out her products” trended on Sina Weibo’s hot search list, more than 100 million users visited Chinagoods, a platform favored by Yiwu vendors, to view the video. Fu said she received a flood of calls from both customers and fellow sellers asking how to use DeepSeek themselves.　

Since DeepSeek-V3 was released as an open-source model at the end of 2024 and quickly gained global traction, more enterprises across various sectors have announced they are integrating or experimenting with the model.

Lou Qinfeng, technology director at Chinagoods, told NewsChina that he has closely followed AI development since ChatGPT captured global attention in 2023. Over the past two years, Lou’s team has partnered with top AI firms to train large models specifically tailored for the e-commerce sector.　

“Going forward, we’ll roll out over 10 AI-powered apps covering product design, display and transactions, contract fulfillment and more,” he said.　

Other companies are jumping on board. Wuyue Xinghe, a Guangzhou-based multi-channel network (MCN) company, declared February its internal “AI learning month.” The company’s CEO Sun Shiyong instructed employees to submit at least 10 queries a day to DeepSeek, then select the top three applications for company-wide use.　

“Those who master AI will win. Those who wait and see will fall behind,” read a 2,000-word company memo, which Sun admits was written with DeepSeek in just 30 seconds. “If I had written it myself, it would’ve taken half a day or more,” Sun said.　

Despite the productivity boost, employees are increasingly anxious about job security, especially as reports emerge of companies laying off staff and replacing them with AI systems.　

One such case is Shanghai Chicmax Cosmetics, which drew public scrutiny after a screenshot of an alleged internal chat group surfaced online. The image appeared to show the company was planning to cut 50 percent of its legal team, 95 percent of customer service staff, 70 percent of product innovation and 80 percent of content staff.　

The drastic cuts left many netizens stunned as a sign of how quickly AI might displace human labor.　

“DeepSeek has made AI widely accessible across industries and will certainly replace some basic work, especially tasks that don’t require creative thinking,” said Cui Lili, director of the E-Commerce Institute at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. “But layoffs carried out in the name of AI, especially with such dramatic announcements, likely have other motivations.”　

After investing in ultra-short dramas on Douyin for advertising, Shanghai Chicmax’s annual revenue surged to 4.2 billion yuan (US$642.9m) in 2023, up 56.7 percent from the year before. Ahead of the 2025 Spring Festival, CEO Lü Yixiong announced in an open letter that the company would make AI a core competitive advantage, aiming to reach 10 billion yuan (US$1.4b) in revenue by 2025 and 30 billion yuan (US$4.3b) by 2030.　

But the future remains uncertain. According to Beauty in Sight, a media outlet and industry analyst focused on the beauty sector, the gross merchandise value (GMV) of KANS, Shanghai Chicmax’s most advertised brand through product placement in ultra-short dramas, on a livestream platform dropped 20 percent year-on-year in January. With AI progressing rapidly, Lü may be adjusting his strategy.　

Amid the controversy, Lü responded on WeChat, insisting the company is not planning mass layoffs but is undergoing “restructuring.” He claimed the total number of employees would actually grow from 1,900 to 2,700 by year’s end. “We’ll downsize some departments and expand others to make operations more efficient,” he said.　

“We don’t intend to replace workers with AI. We’re just exploring applications, like many others,” a company representative told NewsChina on condition of anonymity.

Still, Cui cautions against rushing into AI adoption. “Even if the leaked Shanghai Chicmax restructuring plan is accurate, the changes should be implemented gradually,” she said. “An AI model isn’t ready to replace legal and customer service teams without targeted training and adaptation.”　

Xie Linglong, co-founder of a traditional clothing brand, is among those approaching AI with caution. “We’re currently using AI tools to generate images, hoping to reduce our reliance on labor-intensive photography, which is the most complicated part of e-commerce. But we’ve run into issues like awkward hand shapes, mismatched scenarios and the generated clothing not matching the real thing,” he told NewsChina.　

Gao Lin, who runs an online store selling AI tools, said DeepSeek has made customer service much cheaper. But current systems can only simplify a few functions. “If no one is supervising the AI customer service, problems will inevitably occur,” she warned.　

Recent reports confirm these limitations. According to The Paper, many users complained that AI customer service often fails to answer their questions, especially on after-sales issues. The systems are also notoriously stubborn in not putting customers through to a human when requested.　

Zhong Xinlong, AI research director at the Future Industry Institute under the China Center for Information Industry Development, noted that human representatives still have the edge in one key area: empathy. “AI may sound human and mimic voices well, but that doesn’t mean it can replace real conversations. It still struggles with dialects, everyday idioms and emotional connection,” he said.　

Yuan Bo, a chief engineer at the Zhongguancun Innovation Alliance for New Super-Internet Infrastructure Industries, suspects many companies are simply riding the AI hype. “Connecting to DeepSeek is meaningless if you’re not planning to build on it with secondary development or real integration,” he said.　

Yuan pointed out that widespread transformation will not come until hardware becomes more affordable. “If low-end GPU clusters become widely available and can work well with domestic chips, that might be the moment the industry sees a real turning point,” he said.