EBay is adding image functionality to its AI offering, meaning the app will now be able to generate product details from uploaded photos of items placed for sale.
AI will produce titles, descriptions and other key details, such as product release date, detailed category and sub-category, then draw on EBay’s other tech to suggest a listing price and shipping cost.
The tool — currently only available on the IOS version of EBay’s app — is intended to make listing items easier for first-time sellers.
Having already been released in a beta version for employees, it will be made available to customers over the coming months.
Citing the example of trading cards, EBay said, “Even just identifying a specific trading card, from the millions out there, can be difficult. Buyers demand a great deal of information before they make a purchase, including manufacturer, set, league, team, card number, parallel/variety, grade, year and more. We think we can provide a more efficient way for sellers to provide that information.”
The company has also upgraded its background removal tool, letting sellers present a clearer image of their products.
The new functionality enhances EBay’s AI offering, building on a tool that extrapolates details about listings from images and small pieces of data.
The e-commerce giant said the first version of the tool used AI to “analyze, research, and extrapolate information,” making selling easier and giving buyers more information about potential purchases.
Already rolled out across the U.S. market for both iOS and Android app users, following positive feedback, it let sellers use generative AI to compile a description of an item from just a title, or title and category.
EBay said that by July, about 30% of U.S. app users tried the feature on a given day, with over 95% of those going on to use the AI-generated descriptions, including with edits.
“EBay has been integrating various forms of AI into our tech for years now, through machine learning, deep learning, computer vision and other AI technologies,” said the company.
“With recent advances in generative AI — in which AI algorithms can actually create text, images and videos — we’ve been able to use our large-scale yet extensible AI infrastructure to swiftly integrate Azure’s OpenAI technologies into our marketplace, all to make the process of selling and buying on EBay as seamless as possible.”
It added that AI allowed it to combine more detailed, accurate and in-depth listings with greater speed and ease for sellers.
“AI will keep developing, and we’ll continue to incorporate cutting-edge technologies across our teams with the goal of making your EBay experience consistently more magical,” said the e-commerce giant.