eBay announced alongside their latest Quarterly Business Results that they are working on a Generative AI solution to automatically create listing descriptions from a single photo uploaded by sellers. And not just the listing description – the aim is to auto-populate Item Specifics as well.
eBay has operated a Core AI platform for years, and in Q1 further ramped up development with they say substantial results. In Search, they improved retrieval and ranking functionality to more efficiently locate and present your most relevant listings to buyers—implementing incremental but profound changes that are already measurably improving sales conversion.
eBay also re-engineered their proprietary computer vision technology to dramatically improve the speed and efficacy of image search and “see visually similar results” requests, to unlock more buyer discovery of unique and hard-to-describe items from your incredible inventory. For example, buyers can now also search and navigate listings by pattern, shape or even size, instead of by just text, to more quickly zero in on the item they love.
But what could be really interesting is their Generative AI work, they are currently in the process of creating a plug-in that will allow you to auto-generate item descriptions based on content already available across the web. eBay say that soon they will start to roll out tests for sellers to pre-populate categories and item specifics from a single photo—so you spend less time creating listings and more on growing and managing your business.
8 Responses
They already auto-populate item specifics and they get it wrong almost all the time. Eg. I am selling a CD of a Star Wars soundtrack. So Ebay autofills the “artist” specific with War (as in the group led by Eric Burdon after he left The Animals). Or if I put the word “sealed” in the title, Ebay thinks the artist is Seal (as in Kiss From a Rose). Not so intelligent, that A.I.!!
Auto-population ahhh yess, I know it by another name, that being “The tyranny of the default”
Auto-suggestion however, would prove way more useful whilst allowing for at least some human interaction within listing creation and fewer defaults.
Wonder if ebay will allow not as described claims when this Ai takes iver
Whilst ebay are working on introducing AI to write a description I am already able to use AI to write a description on Shopify. Kind of sums up where ebay are, the tech company that does not do tech or catches up after others have implemented it yet charges a premium to sell on the site.
Maybe if ebay focused more time on developing things like AI to write descriptions and less time coming up with metrics/defects and estimated delivery dates the site would be a much better experience for sellers.
Maybe they can actually allow AI to serve up more relevant search results. Oh wait, no – they would lose all of their ad revenue.
Clever tech and they are jumping on the bandwagon – but their business is plagued by serious issues and major competition from free social platforms.
We worked with them heavily to bring top brand products on site, so that consumers would trust and use the site – this didn’t work, so now they’ve turned to a pay for the highest spot approach which will slowly kill off the 2nd tier sellers that have made eBay what it is for 20years.
If I was them Id just save the cash on the investment and make a penny whilst they can.
Technology serves us to a point, but as we allow it to take over more and more it becomes a crutch, and a bad one at that. There becomes a dependency, and a level of control that starts to take over our lives leading to more anxiety and stress. As time goes on we’re forced to become more and more dependent if we want to to continue to make ends meet. I don’t see it leading us anywhere positive.
As to eBay and AI, they can’t even get the basics right. Call me an old stick in the mud, but I’ll stay with manually human written descriptions and specifics.
Just a matter of weeks ago this website was talking about the Metaverse being the future. Now it’s dead.
eBay banned my account because they miscategorized my car as a toy car and the price was deemed suspicious…