Alibaba reveals "Dong Dong" as virtual influencer for the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022

Based on cloud technology, Dong Dong is an advanced digital persona developed by Alibaba to engage with fans.

Dong Dong as the cloud-based influencer for the Olympic Winter Games

Alibaba wants to promote the possibilities of cloud-based innovation to consumers

As a global top partner of the International Olympic Committee, Alibaba Group has introduced a virtual influencer for the Olympic Winter Games. According to the company, Dong Dong is described as a passionate, outspoken Beijing-born 22-year-old woman who loves winter sports.

In order to come up with Dong Dong's human-like personality, Alibaba created a special cloud-based AI model. This makes use of  Text to Speech to synthesize human voices and leverages 3D-driven technology to create various realistic facial expressions and natural body movements.

The company also equipped the virtual influencer with cloud computing and AI technologies so it can look, speak and act like a young woman with a lively personality. Alibaba also has multimodal algorithms that were used to make Dong Dong 'smart' enough to take part in human-like dialogues naturally, with her scripts entirely generated by cloud technologies.

To interact with audiences in an engaging manner

This influencer is designed to improve connection with Olympic fans, especially the younger, tech-savvy generation. Dong Dong allegedly has authentic human-like features, a sparkling personality, as well as her specialty to interact with audiences in an engaging manner.

Alibaba claims that Dong Dong is not only going to promote Olympic merchandise but she can also answer questions with a natural human voice, different emotions, and different body gestures. 

Aside from that, the cloud-based influencer can do live talk shows to introduce Olympic fun facts and perform her dance moves.  Leader of Alibaba Virtual Human & Intelligent Customer Service Xiaolong Li emphasized,

Our ambition is to use cloud technology to give the Olympic Winter Games a digital uplift and to deliver Olympic Winter Games experiences relating to cloud and e-commerce platform services to fans in a creative way. That’s why we developed Dong Dong, with the hope that the cloud-based virtual influencer can create better engagement with the younger, digital natives in an exciting and natural way.

Xiaolong Li added that they will continue to explore digital personas or virtual influencers to engage with their audience through immersive experiences or a metaverse-style setting. He also pointed out that these influencers can be useful, practical, and efficient assistants to reporters.

Aside from Dong Dong, there were other creative technologies designed to support engagement with Olympic fans that have also been unveiled during Beijing 2022. Alibaba introduced Cloud Showcasing and Cloud Official Olympic Store on Tmall.

To learn more about how Alibaba developed Dong Dong, you can watch a video by clicking here.

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