Etsy, Amazon, and eBay recently announced their latest initiatives using AI (artificial intelligence) to improve their marketplaces. Etsy is using AI to personalize shopping; Amazon is using AI to crack down on counterfeits; and eBay is using AI to improve the listing process for sellers.
Etsy said shoppers can now browse curated collections amplified by AI on the Etsy app. Once human employees identify and create a collection based on trends, aesthetics and occasions, they use AI technology to build it out. As Etsy explained:
“These collections exemplify the power of AI combined with human touch. They are curated by a team of Etsy experts who spot the latest trends and find high-quality items to match. After a collection is identified, our engineers use machine learning to expand it from roughly 50 human-curated listings to about 1,000. Once expanded, we use large language models (LLMs) to make sure the full collection is aesthetically cohesive, represents a variety of products, and meets our standards for quality.”
In displaying “human and AI-powered recommendations” to shoppers, which Etsy calls “algotorial curation,” it uses shopper behavior (recent activity including purchases and viewed items) to determine which trends to display and the order in which to show items in the shoppers’ feeds.
Meanwhile Amazon said it was using AI innovations to stop fraud and counterfeits, spending over a billion dollars in 2024 and employing thousands of people, including machine learning scientists, software developers, and expert investigators, “to help protect customers, brands, selling partners, and our store from counterfeit, fraud, and other forms of abuse.”
Amazon said through its continued investment in AI, its proactive controls blocked over 99% of suspected infringing listings before the brand owners had to find and report them.
eBay also announced an AI initiative, reported in EcommerceBytes last week in, “eBay Rolls Out Magical Listing to Mobile.” In its announcement, eBay boasted that over 10 million sellers worldwide had already used its AI features, “creating well over 100 million listings using AI and generating billions in gross merchandise volume (GMV).”
Corporations are eager to use AI to save costs and are just as eager to convince Wall Street investors of the potential for savings and efficiencies. eBay’s Chief Financial Officer Steve Priest participated in an interview about eBay’s AI initiatives that Deloitte paid the Wall Street Journal to run on April 11 in a sponsored-content series called “Executive Perspectives.”