In the AI era, the integration of artificial intelligence into lexicography and language service technologies has become inevitable. Lexicographers and language technology developers are actively exploring ways to embed AI into their research and products to remain relevant and competitive. This study investigates how frequent users of Chinese-English reference tools perceive current translation software and dictionaries, as well as their expectations for future improvements. User reviews reveal that while current reference tools provide decoding functions, there is still a significant unmet demand for encoding support. Questionnaire results further show that users strongly expect improvements in electronic dictionaries and AI tools, especially regarding cultural adaptability, specialised terminology, and the quality of example sentences. These findings offer new insights into the evolving needs of dictionary users in the AI era. Our study aims to support the development of next-generation language tools that are efficient, user-friendly, and culturally adaptive, particularly for Chinese users learning English as a second language. To this end, we also evaluate the DeepSeek-R1 model for generating advanced Chinese-English translations and lexicographic content. Compared to Google Translate and DeepL, DeepSeek-R1 shows superior performance in handling specialised terms, syntactic accuracy, and textual coherence. Furthermore, in the specific task of providing in-depth explanations of specialised terms, although GPT-4o performs competently, DeepSeek-R1 demonstrates a stronger lexicographic capability than both Gemini-2.5 and GPT-4o.