On June 18, the Ministry of Commerce, in conjunction with eight departments including the Central Cyberspace Administration of China, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, officially issued the “Implementation Opinions on Accelerating the Development of “Artificial Intelligence + Consumption””, proposing 17 specific measures around five major aspects.
This document is the implementation plan of the “State Council’s Opinions on Deeply Implementing the “Artificial Intelligence +” Action” in the consumer field. It is also the intersection of the “Special Action Plan to Boost Consumption” and the “Artificial Intelligence +” national strategy. It is equivalent to the implementation map of the AI consumption field.
Different from the introductory statements of traditional consumption policies, this policy document intensively contains executive verbs such as “accelerate the rollout”, “accelerate popularization”, “research inclusion”, “carry out pilots” and “organize implementation”, marking that AI consumption has entered the implementation stage from the direction discussion stage.
This policy releases three key signals: The first is a rare joint announcement, with eight departments spanning product research and development, scenario implementation, content supply, infrastructure and other aspects, opening up the management rights and responsibilities of the entire chain of AI consumption at once; the second is the simultaneous efforts of both supply and demand sides, clearly proposing to break through the blockage of “products but no market” or “demand but no supply” in the artificial intelligence application process.
point, facing the problem of information mismatch between technology and market that AI consumption faced before; third, for the first time, smart homes have been included in the “good house” construction system, and smart homes and service applications have been clearly studied into the “good house” construction guidelines, which means that smart homes are no longer an optional consumer electronics category, but have become an integral part of building standards. The industrial logic has shifted from “post-installation renovation” to “front-installation embedding”.
On the demand side, the policy targeted the three major consumption suppression pain points: first, it lowered the price threshold through subsidies + interest discounts, and clearly included the new generation of smart terminals and smart home appliances in the scope of trade-in subsidies. It also supported the fiscal discount policy for personal consumption loans, and added support for the supply side from the National Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund, two-way lowering the cost threshold of AI consumption; second, it cracked the recognition through scenarios first.
Knowledge suppression requires the construction of AI consumption clusters and experience centers, the promotion of product leasing and trial services, and the launch of the “Artificial Intelligence into Ten Thousand Households” campaign to allow consumers to intuitively perceive the practical value of AI products and reduce decision-making costs; the third is to build trust infrastructure by improving the standard system, establish intelligent grading standards and evaluation systems for artificial intelligence terminals, promote cross-industry and cross-brand interconnection, break the long-standing brand island problem in the smart home industry, and allow consumers to buy with confidence and use with peace of mind.
On the supply side, the policy has delineated three clear development paths for enterprises: The first is to promote the AI transformation of traditional home appliances, accelerate the installation of AI capabilities in existing categories such as smart TVs, smart home appliances, smart kitchens and bathrooms, and smart lighting, and promote product competition from hardware parameter-oriented to intelligent service-oriented. At present, many home appliance companies have launched AI home appliance products with functions such as food material management, human body induction adjustment, and rhythmic dimming, with good market feedback.
The second is to open up a new track for home service robots. On the one hand, it supports the development of humanoid robots with multi-modal perception and scene adaptation capabilities to seize the commanding heights of global technology. On the other hand, it targets key groups such as “the elderly and the young” to accelerate the maintenance of robots.
The application demonstrations of old robots, companion robots, AI life assistants and other products have positioned home robots as infrastructure-level products that solve the urgent needs of society such as elderly care and childcare. According to industry agency predictions, China’s embodied intelligent robot market will reach US$77 billion in 2030, and the home scene will become the core growth pole.
The third is to build a full-scenario linkage ecosystem of “people, cars, and homes” and promote the interconnection of wearable devices, intelligent connected cars, and smart homes. In the future, competition in AI consumption will shift from single-product intelligence to cross-scenario ecological competition.
Overall, this policy marks a shift in the support logic of the AI industry from the previous “supply-side dance alone” to “supply and demand dance”. It activates market demand through consumer-side policies, and then uses demand to guide corporate investment, forming a positive cycle of large-scale application cost reduction and further expansion of demand.
For relevant enterprises, the core of competition in the next stage will focus on the policy implementation channels. Whether they can enter the subsidy list, access the “good house” standard, participate in scenario pilots, and access the cross-brand interconnection system will become the core variables for enterprise growth.
