How can I fight AI+local life?
Tech Planet has learned exclusively that Meituan recently tested the AI assistant service "Ask Pocket" for C-end users, which is similar to the AI shopping guide function of e-commerce platform, and can recommend takeout products that meet users' needs, as well as meal suggestions. At present, the AI assistant service "Ask Small Bag" has started a small-scale test in the Meituan takeaway platform. Coincidentally, dithering life services are also testing the layout of AI in local life scenes. Tech Planet has learned exclusively that Diaoyin Life Service has set up an AI team. The purpose of this department is to use AI technology to create incremental business value for Diaoyin Life Service, and has started research and development of relevant AI products, including building a content creation platform related to life services. And I'm hungry. At the beginning of this month, "Aoxiang", a retail merchant SAAS platform, announced the official release of the "AI Business Assistant" function for retailers in the retail industry, which can generate various key business reports and key data for businesses. The application of AI technology is expected to bring more innovation and increment to the local life industry. With the landing of more and more AI applications, AI may become a new growth curve for platforms. Meituan, Diaoyin Life Service Open volume AI Meituan will regard AI as the development focus in 2023. According to Panther Change, the top decision-making body of Meituan, S-team, pays great attention to the big model inside Meituan. Wang Xing will ask the head of the algorithm team about the progress of the big model every two weeks. However, with the emergence of AI assistant service "Ask Pocket", Meituan AI finally tested the local life scene at the C-end. "Ask the Small Bag" is a takeout intelligent assistant product based on the Raccoon model, which can provide users with catering recommendations, gift giving suggestions and other services, similar to the shopping guide assistant. Photo caption: "Ask for pouch" test interface. Tech Planet Experience found that "Ask the Pocket" can automatically match takeout goods that meet the user's consumption intention according to the keywords or key sentences searched by the user. For example, when searching for "gift for girlfriend", "ask for a small bag" will recommend flowers, chocolate boxes, aromatherapy and other take away goods, and classify these goods so that users can filter and shop according to their needs. Photo caption: The operation interface of "Ask for a Bag". According to an employee of Meituan, for users, in addition to takeout, AI is required to enhance user experience in more than 200 life service scenarios, such as in store consumption, hotel tourism, etc. From the perspective of merchants, AI will improve the efficiency of merchants and analyze their operation status. For example, it can conduct a fine-grained analysis of user comments, so as to describe the service status of merchants, conduct competitive analysis of merchants and insight into business circles, and provide merchants with refined business suggestions. In addition to Meituan, Dithering Life Service is also testing the landing of AI applications. Tech Planet learned that Tipping Life Service mobilized some technicians from Life Service and formed an AI team to explore the combination of AI and Life Service. The team is located in Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu, and is composed of algorithm+engineering team. The specific business includes intelligent customer service, content creation, knowledge mapping, etc. Tech Planet also learned exclusively that the AI capabilities of Ditto Life Service are currently mainly used in B-end scenarios, among which, the Ditto Guest APP has launched a number of AI functions, including intelligent editing, short video intelligent creation tools, intelligent graphic creation, etc., to provide businesses with relevant AIGC intelligent marketing and creation services. Note: AI video creation interface in the Treble Guest APP. The Diaoyin Guest APP has become an important entrance for Diaoyin Life Service to provide AI services for merchants and talents. In addition, according to insiders, Diaoyin Life Service also plans to build its own large model of Diaoyin Life Service and build AI service capabilities. From the action of the head platform, there is no doubt that AI is changing the local life service business. Will AI local life be a good business? Although the application of AI on various platforms is still in its early stage, local businesses with keen sense of smell have already started to make money with AI. A takeout merchant who serves food and beverage in Meituan and Lulemi told Tech Planet, "The most intuitive feeling is that the platform is paying more and more attention to AI, and both Meituan and Lulemi have launched AI business tools." Taking Meituan's AI tool as an example, the merchant said that it began to use Meituan's BETTER delivery business model at the beginning of this year. This AI tool can recommend a marketing strategy more suitable for its target customer group for its own restaurant by analyzing the consumer behavior and preferences of users. For example, for the surrounding office workers, the weekday lunch package was launched to attract more customers. In addition, the merchant also used a third-party AI tool to help the restaurant optimize the menu. According to the sales data of dishes and user feedback, AI suggested that the restaurant adjust the order of some dishes to highlight the signature dishes and hot selling dishes. At the same time, the restaurant was reminded to eliminate some unpopular dishes, which improved the efficiency and satisfaction of customers. Most importantly, AI can help businesses make data analysis and business decisions. Through in-depth analysis of business data, restaurant operators can better understand their own business situation, adjust business strategies in time, and improve revenue. Compared with those who did not use AI, the restaurant takeout sales data of the merchant increased by about 20%. However, some businesses hold different opinions. A group buying merchant told Tech Planet that although it followed the trend of using AI, its effect was not particularly obvious. For example, the use of AI generated ad copywriting on social media has actually attracted few customers. Although AI can generate copywriting quickly, it lacks in-depth understanding of local culture and consumers' emotions, which makes it difficult for advertising copywriting to impress people. AI also has limitations in providing personalized services. Local life focuses on intimate interaction and personalized experience with customers, while AI is difficult to fully capture and respond to this demand, which may lead to a decline in customer satisfaction. The above group buying merchants believe that "it is commodity prices and service quality that attract users to consume". It can be seen that AI still has much room for optimization in the actual business application scenarios. How to tell new AI stories in local life AI application in local life field is undoubtedly a major trend in the current industry development. An industry person said that AI local life has a large imagination space. First, it can provide more personalized services. Through the analysis of user preferences and behaviors, AI can accurately recommend local life services that meet users' needs and improve user experience. Secondly, AI can improve service efficiency. It can quickly process large amounts of data, provide users with real-time services, and save users' time. In addition, AI can also promote the innovation of business models and bring more business value to enterprises. From the action of Meituan, Diaoyin and Hungry, we all hope to tell the new story of AI well. For example, Meituan is increasing its recruitment of large model technicians. On Meituan's official recruitment website, we searched for more than 300 positions related to the big model, involving many departments such as store business group, Meituan platform, basic research and development platform, comment business department, financial service platform, etc. This means that Meituan may apply AI to core businesses such as delivery and distribution in the future. It is worth noting that there are also new players joining the AI local life track. For example, since the end of last year, Baidu has held a local life friendly city conference with the theme of "hot AI life, smart future", deeply integrated its local life friendly with AI, invited businesses from all over the world to join this new business and seize this new market cake. However, AI local life services are still in the early stage of development, and there are also many challenges. At the first quarter financial report meeting of Meituan last year, Wang Xing, CEO of Meituan, said that although AI may have a fundamental impact on the way of social interaction in the long run, the impact of AI in the performance service industry is still small. This is because one of the characteristics of the performance service industry is that it is highly dependent on human resources. For example, in the field of delivery, the delivery staff needs to make path planning and traffic condition judgment according to the real-time situation to provide efficient delivery services. This real-time and flexible requirement makes the current AI technology relatively less applied in the performance service. AI is also a particularly costly project, which requires a large number of scientific researchers and technical experts to conduct algorithm research, model training and other work. The application of AI in the field of local life services may become mainstream in the future, but it is still almost hot in the current practical business level.
