China’s Alipay is the true “everything app,” featuring an AI baldness detector, payment services, ride-sharing, and more, admired by Elon Musk for X.com.
Eat your heart out. The actual “everything app” is China’s Alipay, according to Elon Musk and X.com.
An artificial intelligence (AI) “mini app” for baldness detection is one eWallet feature that most of us never considered wishing for. However, that is just what Alipay, China’s most significant payment app, has now debuted.
Alipay enables users to link their bank accounts to the app to expedite payments online and at the point of sale, much like most eWallet/payments programs. However, Alipay does much more than merely accept payments.
Known as a “super app” for residents, Alipay offers many functions such as ride-sharing, bill payment, retail, social network integration, mobile phone services, coupon and travel services, and more.
The app’s most recent addition, an AI-powered hair loss detector, significantly diverges from its previous utility-based features.
As per a South China Morning Post report, individuals can submit images of their scalps for analysis by an image recognition system trained on thousands of images related to medicine. After that, the app offers advice to users, including, if necessary, recommending medical attention.
The AI-powered “Medical Assistant” feature of Alipay, which Antgroup, Alibaba’s finance affiliate, develops, was first introduced in April 2024. This suite now includes the newly introduced hair loss detector.
Convenience and simplification are the primary motivations for integrating a lifestyle services app, a medical tool, and an application for digital wallets. Though these apps are widely used in the East, North America, and Europe, they have yet to see a comparable uptake.
Elon Musk is among many who support the multimodal “super app” idea. He has repeatedly expressed his desire for X.com to develop into an all-in-one app on par with products available in the Chinese market.
However, privacy advocates worldwide have been warning for some time that these applications combine user data in a way that leaves users’ security and privacy vulnerable to the whims of the app’s owner and any third parties that may access the information.
For instance, the Chinese government has made it apparent that it needs access to user data in the case of Alipay. Building and running a database of user activity is a relatively simple task, effectively producing a real-time citizen activity tracker, even though there is no official statement on how the data is being used.
