Amazon continues to embed AI into its marketplace, both to help sellers list faster and to give buyers useful, more digestible information. The latest feature is an artificial intelligence tool that can answer shoppers’ questions about a product, a company spokesperson confirmed to CNBC.
Marketplace Pulse broke the news, explaining: “The section “Looking for specific info?” on a product page, which previously searched in reviews and customer questions and allowed submitting new questions that sellers or other customers could answer, is now powered by AI on the iPhone/Android app.”
(That may be why Amazon changed its “Customer Questions & Answers” feature on Amazon product pages, which an EcommerceBytes reader pointed out in November.)
Sellers have no control over how Amazon uses AI to build out buyer-facing features such as review summaries and Q&A features – we’re guessing sellers (and brands) would like a hotline to report problems with listings and reviews, since incorrect information could have a serious impact on sales or on returns.
Article updated Jan. 17th to add the following: Amazon said in a statement : “Amazon has been using machine learning and AI for many years in virtually everything we do. We’re constantly inventing to help make customers’ lives better and easier, and are currently testing a new feature powered by generative AI to improve shopping on Amazon by helping customers get answers to commonly asked product questions.”
Amazon started showing US customers AI-generated snippets of product reviews when shopping certain categories on a mobile device in August. It explained at the time, “Want to quickly determine what other customers are saying about a product before reading through the reviews? The new AI-powered feature provides a short paragraph right on the product detail page that highlights the product features and customer sentiment frequently mentioned across written reviews to help customers determine at a glance whether a product is right for them.”
A month later, Amazon added new AI listing capabilities to make it faster for sellers to list new products – “To get started, sellers only need to provide a brief description of the product in a few words or sentences, and Amazon will generate high-quality content for their review. Sellers can refine these, if they want to, or they can directly submit the automatically generated content to the Amazon catalog.”
However, that feature ran into some bad PR for Amazon. As Ars Technica reported on Friday, people began noticing some products had titles featuring AI-related error messages, such as, “Sorry but I can’t generate a response to that request.”*
*Article updated Jan 17th to add: Amazon confirmed they were not generated by an Amazon tool.
The publication published screenshots of some Amazon product pages with nonsensical titles. Ars Technica noted, “Sometimes, the product names even highlight the specific reason why the apparent AI-generation request failed, noting that OpenAI can’t provide content that “requires using trademarked brand names” or “promotes a specific religious institution” or, in one case, “encourage unethical behavior.””
Article updated Jan 17th to add: Amazon provided EcommerceBytes with the following statement: “We work hard to provide a trustworthy shopping experience for customers, including requiring third-party sellers to provide accurate, informative product listings. We have removed the listings in question and are further enhancing our systems.”
eBay has also launched new features that use AI. If you’ve encountered AI on Amazon, eBay, or other shopping websites, feel free to share your experiences and whether they’re helpful to you as a buyer or seller.
Article updated Jan. 17th to add: As evidenced by the listings that Amazon removed, sellers themselves may cause mayhem on online marketplaces through poor implementation of 3rd-party AI tools – another reason to provide sellers with robust capabilities to report problems caused by other sellers.
