China’s massive live-streaming e-commerce sector is known for peddling everything from lipsticks, food and drink to smartphones, cars and even a rocket launch service. It can easily generate tens of billions of dollars in sales overnight during major retail events like Singles’ Day. While major Chinese cities like Shenzhen and Hangzhou are in a race to establish a global live-streaming e-commerce hub, a number of Chinese tech companies are now pushing generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology to create virtual live-streaming hosts capable of round-the-clock sessions, further raising the stakes in this sector. Generative AI refers to the algorithms, such as…