Chinese ‘Virtual Human’ Salespeople Are Outperforming Their Real Human Counterparts

Built using AI technology from Baidu and DeepSeek, the virtual livestreamers sell everything from wet wipes to printers 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The salesperson hawking Brother printers on Taobao works hard—like, really hard. At any time of the day, even when there’s no audience on the Chinese ecommerce platform, the same woman wearing a white shirt and black skirt is always livestreaming, boasting about the various features of different office printers. She has a phone in one hand and often checks it as if to read a sales script or monitor the viewer comments coming in.