Asianfin -- Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba unveiled a new AI-driven search engine on Tuesday, tailored for small businesses in Europe and the Americas to help them source supplies.

Named Accio—after the summoning spell from the Harry Potter series—the tool aims to boost sales by integrating ChatGPT-like technology.

Kuo Zhang, president of Alibaba.com and vice president of Alibaba International, noted that in initial tests, purchase intent among users rose by 40% compared to traditional search engines.

The first version of *Accio* is web-based, supporting English, German, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. With simple text or image prompts, businesses can use *Accio* to find wholesale products, including insights on consumer popularity and potential profitability, based on demonstrations shown to CNBC.

One example featured Accio helping a sports entrepreneur build a line of pickleball products, with the tool presenting various supplier options for direct discussion.

Powered by Alibaba’s proprietary Tongyi Qianwen large language model, *Accio* leverages generative AI for product sourcing. Zhang declined to confirm if other companies' AI models are incorporated into the tool.