Cross-border e-commerce copywriters, translators, models hit ChatGPT is how to take the job away?

At the beginning of this year, the east wind of ChatGPT blew not only to the technology circle, but also to many segments including global cross-border e-commerce.

A senior seller of cross-border e-commerce engaged in categories such as beauty and wigs revealed in an interview that the actual wig models that once cost tens of thousands of yuan to take, now rely on ChatGPT and Midjourney to generate several versions in just 10 minutes, "and the actual test simulation shows that AI drawing will be more realistic than the actual shooting, and after the rendering is completed definitely better than a manual shot."

"The company has laid off most of its copy editors, and basic English editors can now be eliminated altogether. We had five or six people in the copywriting department before, but now there's only one person left." The practitioner who has been deeply involved in cross-border e-commerce for 11 years told reporters, "It (ChatGPT) helps translate and do product editing quickly and well, and with very high accuracy."

Many experts have experienced a similar situation. "In December last year, we were ready to expand the number of our team, but we basically didn't recruit anyone so far this year, and it's good not to cut staff at the moment."

E-commerce translators and models take a hit

Last December, many industries tried to use ChatGPT to write product descriptions, i.e., product specifications and models, applicable scenarios, applicable people, selling points, etc., and use them for translation. After trying it out, he found that the tool was able to solve a persistent problem in the cross-border e-commerce field for several years - the translation problem. "The outside world may think that solving the translation problem is nothing, but this is a disruptive start for our industry because the translation problem is a 'persistent problem' that has been affecting sales for a long time. "

"In our industry, there is a profession called e-commerce translator. Many e-commerce companies will hire returnee graduates (as translators) in order to do global branding and ensure translation accuracy. But the cost of such employees is very high, and small companies can't afford to keep them." He said.

Before ChatGPT came along, using machine translation was a more cost-efficient option. "In the past, using Google Translate and Baidu Translate had more or less grammatical errors, and for some countries with more stringent requirements for vocabulary accuracy, such as Germany and Japan, grammatical errors would affect dispatch and sales. But after ChatGPT came out, we didn't have any grammatical errors again."

"Cross-border e-commerce has a huge demand for this type of text because the same product has to be sold to many different countries, so it has to be translated into the languages of different countries, and ChatGPT has dramatically improved the efficiency."

The visitor said he started using AI tools like ChatGPT in March this year, and now, his company's employees are actively learning to use various AI tools. He also confessed to the reporter that today's AI is fully capable of handling the copywriting and translation required for cross-border e-commerce operations.

"In fact, our company has laid off quite a few people, and now many of the basic English editors can be completely eliminated. The copywriting department had 5~6 people before, but now there is only 1 person left." The visitor said, "AI does translation and does product editing quickly and well, and with very high accuracy."

In the field of cross-border e-commerce, AI is also seizing the high ground of models and photographers. The two aforementioned interviewees told reporters that another AI function commonly used by cross-border e-commerce sellers is Wenshengtu, which uses ChatGPT to generate prompt words and then generates product pictures in different scenarios through tools such as Midjourney.

"Such photos used to be taken by models, but now there is no need, and no need for special photographers to light retouching, we can generate several versions in 10 minutes, and the results are much better than those taken by real people. Finally, e-commerce operators directly select the shelves can be."

The visitor believes that in the future, careers like e-commerce translators and models will slowly become more difficult to take orders. However, he believes that AI can't replace the live-streaming anchors who sell goods for the time being. "Human anchors will mobilize fans' emotions and answer some questions in a timely manner based on timely feedback from the live broadcast room." He explained that "while people will make mistakes and bring a sense of cordiality, these are things written in the genes that AI cannot do."

AI brings down the overall cost for sellers

For copywriters, translators, models and other professions in cross-border e-commerce, the emergence of AI has crowded out the space they would have had. But for the sellers of cross-border e-commerce as a whole, the cost decrease and revenue increase brought by AI are also pleasing to them.

Visitors confessed in an interview that it originally took a day to find a foreign model to shoot a set of pictures, and in addition to lighting and shooting requiring man-hours of labor, retouching also requires costs that are higher than the cost of shooting.

"Retouching requires a combination of hair, little by little, the whole process is very complex. A set down, the worst designer studio on the market are a few thousand dollars. If you want to be high-end, no tens of thousands of dollars is not possible." He told reporters, "But AI now 10 minutes better than the designer, you say why we still use the designer?"

He illustrated to the reporter with a set of actual data from the company, "The original a group is composed of five people, even very experienced employees can do up to two products on the shelves in a day. But now, a group leader only spend about 30 minutes to generate multiple national language versions of the product description, and then these product descriptions distributed, a day of product shelves almost 3 to 4 times, or even higher."

AI's Wenshengtu function has also brought tangible benefits to the company. He told reporters, "We previously built a website, including editing, artwork retouching, web layout, etc., it takes about 4~5 people and 2~3 months to put a website online, but now it only takes 2~3 people and half a month at most to put it online."

"Now you just need to master the new AI tools correctly, in the field of e-commerce, one person can be equal to a war team." He described it this way.

With the help of AI tools, the benefits of cross-border e-commerce are also very substantial. "In March and April of this year, our performance amount increased by more than 200% compared to the same period last year." Qian Dazhu revealed that in the nearly six months since he started using ChatGPT in December last year, he has basically achieved year-on-year growth in performance every month.

"The increase in performance is not only due to the improved work efficiency, but also due to the increased customer repurchase rate after optimizing and adjusting the product pages." The visitor further explained that "there is a very important algorithm inside the e-commerce operations, if a product has a high customer repurchase rate, then it will add push traffic or search volume of this product, also called DC, but also disguised savings in advertising costs."

How will the e-commerce platform survive in the future?

With the convenience brought by ChatGPT, in overseas, Shopify, Instacart, Klarna and other well-known e-commerce have access to ChatGPT; in the country, there are more and more cross-border e-commerce began to actively embrace AI. visitors revealed to reporters, "most of the companies I know are using AI, there should be 60% to 70% of them."

He compared the use of AI tools by domestic and foreign e-commerce companies and concluded that there is still a long way to go domestically. He said, "There is still a big gap at home and abroad. From the underlying logic is different, foreign is the production of AI tools, through ChatGPT and produced many subdivision of the tools, such as making pictures, making video, cutting video. But the country is still stuck in the most basic applications, not yet fully popular."

Faced with the huge AI wave, the two aforementioned interviewees treat AI with a very consistent attitude - AI is the trend, and embracing AI is the only way to cope with it. "What we can do is to learn AI tools well, build our own Noah's Ark, and then harness it instead of being harnessed by it."

With the rapid iteration of AI technology, it is expected that the entire cross-border e-commerce industry within the industry will usher in greater change. "Personally, I predict that probably by the end of this year or early next year, all sellers inside the cross-border e-commerce industry will need to use AI to sell their goods." He said to reporters. "Even with the creation of more AI tools, it is possible that these e-commerce platforms will not even exist in the future. Even if they still exist, the volume of goods sold by these e-commerce platforms will not mainly come from the natural flow or advertising flow of the original e-commerce platform, but from the search volume of GPT."

Are the same problems faced for cross-border e-commerce using AI-generated text and images? The answer is not yet known. However, both interviewees said that no copyright-related risks have been identified for the time being due to the short period of use, and the issue needs to be observed further.