2026外滩大会观察：展台之下，AI走进普通人的日常

The 2026 Bund Conference, held in Shanghai in September, centers on showcasing how artificial intelligence is moving beyond concepts to integrate into people’s daily lives. Unlike other tech events that prioritize showcasing technical capabilities, this conference focuses on real-world, consumer-facing AI deployment, with many practical AI applications available for on-site hands-on experience.

1. Daily task automation: Alipay’s AI agent A-Bao can automate tasks including ordering coffee, arranging business trips, planning travel routes, processing provident fund and childcare subsidy applications, and completing payments – all without requiring users to open multiple separate apps. This simplifies a large volume of repetitive tasks and saves users time.

2. AI-enabled daily life services: AI has penetrated a wide range of routine daily scenarios. In healthcare, AI supports triage, medical report interpretation, and helps rural grassroots village doctors organize patient records, expanding access to care for residents in remote areas. Home AI systems can also analyze personal health data to deliver customized wellness recommendations.

3. Native security design: AI services at the conference are built with native security capabilities. All operations involving consumption or personal information require explicit user confirmation, with verifiable identity authentication and end-to-end encryption, eliminating major security concerns for users.

The Bund Conference outlines the emerging trend of AI integration into daily consumer scenarios, providing clear strategic direction for brands’ marketing, channel development and product planning.

1. Adapting to shifting consumer trends: Consumers are increasingly willing to let AI handle repetitive tasks, driving rapid growth in demand for AI-powered services. Consumers can now access brand services and complete transactions directly through AI agents, without opening brands’ standalone apps. Brands need to proactively build AI agent-compatible outreach strategies to open this new service channel.

2. Optimizing offline operations: Offline stores can deploy AI tools to cut costs and boost efficiency. AI store attendants can handle greeting, product consultation and checkout, while connected AI operating agents can analyze sales data and manage inventory. These tools suit all types of offline stores, allowing brands to reduce labor costs when expanding their offline footprints.

3. Refining product strategies: AI has already integrated into fragmented daily scenarios from coffee retail to travel and general consumer goods. Brands can optimize product experiences around the unique characteristics of AI services to capture new growth opportunities in AI-enabled consumption.

The Bund Conference outlines the latest trend of AI deployment in everyday industries, highlighting new growth opportunities for sellers while clarifying key risks to manage.

1. New growth opportunities: AI has moved out of niche tech circles and into mainstream commercial scenarios, enabling both large sellers and small-to-mid-sized offline sellers to access AI tools at low cost. AI store attendants can replace human workers for routine in-store tasks, while AI operating agents handle data analysis and inventory management, effectively cutting operational costs and boosting efficiency. In addition, AI agents have emerged as new traffic and service entry points; accessing these platforms allows sellers to reach more target consumers and open new growth channels.

2. Key risk warnings: Since AI services handle sensitive data including user identity information and payment transactions, security must be the top priority. Sellers should follow core rules including verifiable identity authentication, controlled authorization, and mandatory secondary user confirmation for payments, to avoid security disputes that erode consumer trust in the brand.

3. Opportunity reminder: User behavior has already shifted from opening multiple standalone apps to letting AI handle tasks on their behalf. Sellers that proactively adapt their offerings for AI will be best positioned to capture the dividends of this industry transformation.

The Bund Conference showcased the latest applications of AI and embodied intelligence in manufacturing, delivering practical insights and new business opportunities for factories advancing digital transformation.

1. Production upgrade opportunities: New generation embodied intelligent robots are already deployable in real production environments, capable of completing complex tasks including component identification, motion path planning, and flexible assembly. Unlike traditional fixed-program robotic arms, these new robots can adapt to changing environments. Factories can introduce these robots to replace human workers for repetitive, high-intensity production tasks, boosting overall operational efficiency.

2. Safety management upgrade opportunities: For high-risk tasks such as facility inspections, quadruped robots and aerial drones can take on assignments that are unsuitable for long-term human work, entering hazardous areas to help factories reduce operational safety risks and cut the frequency of safety accidents.

3. Transformation strategy insights: AI has now moved from conceptual testing to real industrial deployment, with a growing number of mature, production-ready AI tools available on the market. Factories do not need to complete full digital transformation in one step. Instead, they can start with AI deployment for high-risk and repetitive labor scenarios, rolling out AI applications incrementally to reduce transformation costs and risks.

The Bund Conference outlined the latest industry trends in AI scenario deployment, clarified core current customer pain points, and defined clear directions for service providers’ business growth.

1. Industry development trends: AI has exited the pure technology demonstration phase and is now being broadly deployed in both consumer daily life and B2B industrial scenarios. Both C-end consumers and B-end businesses and factories have strong, unmet demand for deployable AI applications, opening up substantial market space for AI application services.

2. Core customer pain points: C-end users need AI to replace repetitive operations and eliminate the hassle of switching between multiple apps; small and medium-sized B-end businesses need low-cost AI operation tools that can be deployed quickly; factories require intelligent production equipment that can adapt to complex production environments. Additionally, all AI applications carry inherent security risks, and users universally prioritize security for identity, permission and transaction processing.

3. Business expansion directions: Service providers can develop AI agent-based solutions adapted for various life and business scenarios, build integrated AI operation tools for B-end clients, and build security as a native system capability to meet full-scenario security requirements, aligning with core market demand today.

The Bund Conference revealed the new demands all types of market players have for platforms in the AI era, and clarified directions for platforms’ merchant recruitment, operations, and risk mitigation.

1. Shifting business demand: AI agents have emerged as new service entry points, and merchants and service providers all require platforms to open up AI agent integration capabilities, so that AI can directly respond to user demand and complete service transactions. At the same time, AI security has become a core fundamental demand; platforms need to build native security systems that provide basic capabilities for AI applications including verifiable identity, traceable intent, controlled authorization, and end-to-end encryption.

2. Merchant recruitment and operation direction: The AI industry is growing rapidly. This year’s conference attracted more than 300 participating enterprises, 40+ of which focus on embodied intelligence, demonstrating strong demand for exhibition and cooperation opportunities from AI-focused companies. Platforms can prioritize recruitment in AI-related sectors, and develop new exhibition zones and cooperation matching channels centered on AI deployment scenarios.

3. Risk mitigation: Platforms need to address the public’s legitimate concerns about AI, including issues around employment, fairness and education, guide the AI industry to develop around the needs of everyday people, and mitigate related public opinion and social risks.

The 2026 Bund Conference showcased the latest development trends of the AI industry, put forward many new research-worthy propositions, and delivers high reference value for AI-related industrial research.

1. New industry trends: The AI industry has completed its transition from pure technological concept demonstration to deployment in everyday life and real industrial scenarios. Embodied intelligent robots have already entered real working roles in pharmacies, factories, logistics and catering, while AI agents have emerged as new service entry points that gradually reduce the centrality of standalone apps. Small and medium-sized merchants are also beginning to adopt AI tools at scale, marking that the new AI economy has officially entered the phase of落地 deployment and growth.

2. Emerging research questions: AI deployment has spawned many new research propositions, including why worker fatigue increases even as AI boosts efficiency, the value positioning of human workers amid AI-driven labor substitution, fairness of AI access across income groups, the environmental cost of AI’s high energy and computing consumption, and the direction of education in the AI era. These questions span multiple fields including economics, sociology, education and environmental science.

3. New research directions: The core evaluation standard for AI development has shifted to whether ordinary people can access it, are willing to use it, and can truly benefit from it. The principle that AI development should center on the needs of ordinary people provides a new core direction for AI industry research.