eBay is rolling out a brand new AI software for market sellers that may generate a product itemizing from a single photograph.
Accessible within the eBay app for iOS to begin, with the Android app to comply with within the coming weeks, the software can routinely write a title and outline based mostly on a photograph, in addition to data together with a product launch date, and counsel a class, subcategory, listing worth and delivery value.
The software builds on eBay’s different efforts to inject AI into the promoting course of, together with AI-generated product catalog descriptions and a background removing software for itemizing images.
“The ‘photo-to-listing’ software was constructed internally, and the staff will use the itemizing information generated to ‘prepare’ the mannequin internally. eBay phrases and situations state that we have now a license to make use of itemizing information,” an eBay spokesperson instructed TechCrunch through e mail. “At eBay, we’re utilizing AI to scale back friction throughout the platform and remodel the method of itemizing. With this software, it makes the vendor’s job of itemizing objects extremely painless, simple, and even enjoyable.”
In Could, Adam Eire, head of eBay’s U.S. enterprise, said in a weblog submit that eBay plans to roll out a plugin that’ll let sellers auto-generate merchandise descriptions based mostly on content material already obtainable throughout the online — powered by an OpenAI language mannequin. In that very same weblog submit, Eire telegraphed the discharge of the software launching as we speak.
eBay says that the software is aimed toward addressing the “chilly begin” problem usually skilled by first-time sellers on its platform. Not uncommonly, new sellers are overwhelmed by the quantity of information they should enter to create a aggressive itemizing, eBay claims — so what higher approach to overcome that than by eradicating the necessity to enter data altogether?
eBay’s software converts images to listings. Picture Credit: eBay
“There’s no must work by means of a chilly begin with AI: as quickly as you’re able to promote, your itemizing is able to submit,” eBay writes in a weblog submit. “We’ve been arduous at work on the subsequent model of a brand new, magical itemizing expertise, which makes use of AI to investigate, analysis and extrapolate data from a small quantity of information offered by the vendor.”
However longtime sellers on eBay don’t look like happy with the platform’s AI course.
The official eBay group discussion board and subreddits frequented by sellers are filling up with complaints in regards to the poor high quality of eBay’s description generator, which has been obtainable in restricted exams — with one person on the discussion board, vssoutlet, claiming that eBay’s AI-generated textual content is deceptive and, in some circumstances, downright untruthful. Vssoutlet factors to a listing for a Pentax SLR digicam, for which eBay’s AI generated an outline saying the digicam got here with a lens package — an apparent error.
On the subreddit /r/Flipping, a Reddit group devoted to the artwork of flipping high-profile merch, an eBay vendor going by the title IJustWondering writes that the eBay description generator ceaselessly “re-states the merchandise specifics and the title” and merely “provides some fluff.” One other person, Hardcorelogic, recounts an expertise much like vssoutlet’s, discovering that the AI-written descriptions “comprise errors” and “[are] too lengthy.”
“By the point I received executed fixing [one of the descriptions] and shortening it, I might have written it myself,” Hardcorelogic writes.
This author worries, too, in regards to the photo-recognizing element of eBay’s new generative characteristic. On condition that a few of the finest laptop imaginative and prescient algorithms as we speak are so plagued with bias that they’ll’t reliably distinguish Black folks from gorillas, I don’t have excessive hopes for eBay’s take.
That apart, eBay sellers look like taking problem not solely with generative AI’s tendency to spout mistruths and hallucinate — eBay is nicely conscious of this, as the brand new listing-generating software has a disclaimer warning that the textual content won’t be fully correct — however with the use circumstances that eBay envisions for it.
Sellers level out that eBay’s AI-generated descriptions aren’t clear, concise or direct sufficient for many consumers. The outline generator tends to be repetitive and verbose, they declare — even for primary objects. And the generated textual content doesn’t listing the person traits of things, together with their flaws.
eBay actually isn’t the one market embracing AI as a approach to remedy a funnel downside (i.e. convincing extra sellers, which pay revenue-generating promoting charges, to listing objects — and to make its pages extra discoverable on serps). Shopify just lately launched AI-generated product descriptions, whereas Amazon rolled out AI-generated summaries of evaluations.
The Data reports that Amazon can be piloting AI that’ll enable retailers to generate titles, descriptions and bullet factors for choose merchandise. Not like eBay’s newly launched software, Amazon’s will work not from images however from an inventory of key phrases, and “strictly regulate” the content material allowed within the generated product listings.
However eBay’s roadmap is arguably among the many extra aggressive. And sellers — rightfully so, I’d argue — are starting to query the knowledge of that technique.