In today’s Digest, we cover Ant Group transforming Alipay into an AI-powered platform, Hyundai testing containerised ad tech, and Coupang being hit with a record fine over a massive data breach.

Alipay unveils AI agent overhaul

Ant Group has unveiled the most significant overhaul of Alipay in nearly 20 years, repositioning the app from a digital wallet into a native AI platform powered by autonomous agents. The update introduces an interactive AI assistant called “Ah Bao”, reflecting Ant Group’s ambition to make Alipay a central gateway for everyday digital services in China’s rapidly evolving AI landscape.

The trial version allows users to access more than 10,000 services through natural-language conversations with the AI assistant, including ride-hailing, food delivery and other daily transactions. By embedding AI directly into the user experience, Ant Group is seeking to strengthen Alipay’s role beyond payments.

Hyundai tests containerised ad tech

A potentially significant shift is emerging in programmatic advertising as buyers increasingly move AI-driven bidding and decision-making tools closer to the supply side of the ecosystem. Through a new integration between Chalice AI and OpenX, advertisers can run bidding models directly within OpenX’s cloud-based container infrastructure, allowing them to evaluate a much larger share of available inventory before bid requests are filtered through traditional demand-side platforms.

The approach is designed to improve media efficiency by giving AI models greater visibility into supply and enabling faster, more informed bidding decisions. Automotive brand Hyundai Motor Company served as the pilot advertiser for OpenX’s new OpenXBuild container product and reported positive results. Rather than focusing solely on reducing media costs, Hyundai said the technology helps identify higher-value audiences and prospective buyers more effectively. 

Coupang hit with record fine 

Coupang has been fined a record 624.6bn won (£337.3m) by South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission following a major data breach that exposed the personal information of nearly two-thirds of the country’s population. Regulators said the company failed to implement adequate cybersecurity safeguards and did not properly detect or respond to unauthorised access, in what they described as the largest penalty ever issued in South Korea for a data breach.

The breach, which began through Coupang’s overseas servers and was linked to a former employee’s misuse of an active encryption key, has sparked public backlash and calls for even heavier penalties. The regulator also penalised the company for improper handling of customer data without consent, while lawmakers pushed for fines as high as 1.2 tn won (£648m). 

Coupang said it would challenge the decision in court, arguing that post-breach corrective measures were not fully considered.