(Yicai Global) May 25 -- China's second-largest e-commerce giant by sales JD.Com Inc. will collaborate with iFlytek Co., a leading developer of intelligence voice, by applying the latter's voice-recognition and audio technology to the smart marketing in JD.Com's various retail scenarios.

The two companies signed a cooperation agreement yesterday. By means of data on-boarding, both parties will explore application scenarios for artificial intelligence and voice recognition technologies. The application of iFlytek's speech recognition technology will help e-commerce trading platform JD.com's merchants to offer more efficient and smarter marketing services, they said.

IFlytek will build a proprietary voice-based speech synthesis library for JD.Com, laying the foundation for future brand communications and marketing activities. Both companies will also jointly develop voice interaction technology products. They will be available to the business partners who operate their stores on JD.com to help improve their smart services for customers.

In return, JD.com will provide iFlytek with data on users' consumption needs and preferences to help the intelligent voice company optimize its technology and service to offer better service to brands.

Both companies partnered up in the past on a number of cooperation projects. They penned in January a deal with Industrial Bank Co. to set up an artificial intelligence lab to make China's online payment sector more convenient and secure. They also launched a smart speaker using iFlytek's voice technologies in 2015.

"Voice is a natural mark full of emotional gene," said an unidentified manager from iFlytek. "High-quality voice-based creative marketing is more likely to touch consumers, trigger their emotions and create brand loyalty.

"Voice-based marketing can provide not only unique creative inspiration for JD.com and brands, but also infinite possibilities for diverse marketing methods such as innovative advertising."

Editor: Mevlut Katik