The Shanghai Information Consumption Festival opened on Wednesday, with various events like digitized shopping regions, information service coupons, and the releases of innovative products powered by artificial intelligence and metaverse tech.

The city-level event, lasting one month, is expected to triger an additional information consumption of 45 billion yuan (US$6.52 billion), boosting the Shanghai digital economy, and helping the city turn into a global science and innovation hub.

A digital avatar (left) spoke in the opening ceremony of the Shanghai Information Consumption Festival on Wednesday, with highlights like digital avatars, generative AI, metaverse tech, and livestreaming.

Firms like Meituan, Trip and Douyin are offering online coupons and new services for food delivery, tourism and e-commerce services. One of the spotlight is Meituan's unmanned drone delivery service, which will become a regular and commercial route in Shanghai. It can deliver food and drugs within 15 minutes, within a three kilometer range citywide, with new AI and navigation tech.

Firms like Meituan, Trip and Weimob are offering online coupons, free resources and new services for both consumers and enterprises.

Business-oriented firms, including Weimob and UCloud, are offering resources for digitized and cloud services for small and medium-sized enterprises, such as Weimob's supports valued at 120 million yuan, covering 3,000 firms. Meanwhile, digital avatars will be offered to help small firms livestream for free, which will boost their digitalization and develop new streams of revenue.

Shanghai is promoting information consumption with various support in technology, industry and finance to boost market confidence. With highlights like digital avatars, generative AI, metaverse, livestreaming, the festival is expected drive information consumption to over 45 billion yuan, Zhang Ying, vice director of the the Shanghai Commission of Economy and Informatization, said during the opening ceremony on Wednesday.

Comparatively, the festival boosted a city information consumption of 39 billion yuan in 2022, an 11 percent growth from a year ago, according to the commission.

During the festival, several digitalized shopping regions downtown will be built, covering Nanjing Road, Huaihai Road and Yuyuan Garden, said Huangpu District officials.

A metaverse-style new product release mini-app also debuted at the opening ceremony, which allows visitors to experience the new products and services in an immersive way.