Episode Details

Some of China's largest technology companies have spent tens of billions of yuan this year to push artificial intelligence initiatives for the upcoming Spring Festival, marking their most significant effort yet to take AI applications out of labs and into the daily lives of a nation of more than 1.4 billion consumers.

今年，中国一些大型科技公司已投入数百亿元，在即将到来的春节期间推广人工智能应用。这是他们迄今为止最大的一次努力，旨在将AI应用带出实验室，融入超14亿消费者的日常生活。

The move could potentially give China an early lead in large-scale consumer AI adoption, which may be difficult for its rivals in the United States to replicate, industry experts said.

业内专家表示，此举可能让中国在大规模消费者AI应用上率先一步，美国竞争对手或难以效仿。

At the center of this effort is Alibaba's Qwen app, which announced a 3 billion yuan ($420 million) holiday campaign starting on Friday. The campaign offers users free food, retail and services, but only if they make purchases through the app's AI-assisted ordering system.

阿里巴巴的"通义千问"应用是此番推广的核心，该应用2日宣布开启总价值30亿元的新春活动。这项活动为用户提供免费食品、零售和服务，但前提是他们必须通过应用的AI点单系统进行购买。

For example, users could buy a cup of milk tea or coffee for as little as 0.01 yuan, an offer that has sparked a social media frenzy. Many consumers joked online that they were drinking their first "AI milk tea".

例如，用户可以花0.01元购买一杯奶茶或咖啡，这一活动在社交媒体上掀起热潮。许多消费者在网上开玩笑说，这是自己人生中的第一杯"AI奶茶"。

Alibaba's wider ecosystem, including Taobao flash sales, travel platform Fliggy, ticketing service Damai, grocery chain Hema and payment service Alipay are also participating in the campaign by linking AI prompts directly to ordering and payment systems.

阿里巴巴更广泛的应用生态系统也参与了活动，包括淘宝闪购、旅游平台飞猪、票务服务商大麦、生鲜超市盒马和支付宝，将AI提示直接链接到订购和支付系统中。

Wang Peng, a researcher at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, said: "The move is not simply promotional largesse. It is a behavioral experiment aimed at lowering the cost of trials to near zero and habituating users to use AI for decision-making and transactions."

北京市社会科学院研究员王鹏说："此举并非简单的营销推广，而是一项行为实验，旨在将试错成本降至近乎零，使用户逐渐习惯于用人工智能进行决策和交易