Reuters: JD.com gave away AI livestream hosts as Douyin banned fully synthetic broadcasts

Reuters reported on 24 September 2026 on how China's livestream shopping industry is absorbing AI presenters, in a story centred on Li Jiaqi, the host known as the "Lipstick King."

The report states that JD.com made its AI hosting service free to merchants in December 2025 and said adoption surged within three months, and that JD.com claims AI hosts can reduce livestream operating costs by 80% to 90%. On the platform-rules side, ByteDance-owned Douyin has banned fully AI-generated livestreams and requires disclosure when digital hosts are used, and rules for clear labelling of AI-generated content took effect in September 2025. Lu Lin, a host at the Shanghai agency Romomo, told Reuters that human presenters offer what AI lacks: "It's not just about answering the question. It's about building trust with customers." Ashley Dudarenok of the consultancy Chozan said consumers may gravitate back toward the authenticity of human hosts as AI becomes commonplace, while less successful hosts "will have to use better tools or change occupations."

Why it matters for digital humans: This is the largest working market for avatar presenters anywhere, and the shape it is settling into is instructive: the technology is being commoditised to zero by a platform that wants merchant volume, while the same platforms restrict the fully unattended version of it. That combination — free to run, but not allowed to run alone — is a plausible template for how avatar presenters get regulated elsewhere, and it argues against business models that price the avatar itself rather than what sits around it. The 80-90% cost reduction is JD.com's own figure for its own product and should be read as a sales claim, not a measured result.