eBay's generative AI is quietly launched, sellers: It's too long-winded

Generative AI has been gaining popularity recently, with many large companies adopting it as part of their strategy. The e-commerce industry is no exception, and some platforms have already connected to this revolutionary technology, such as Mercari and its Merchat AI shopping assistant.

eBay CEO Jamie Iannone also hinted in the company's recent earnings report that "we are integrating the ChatGPT API into our core listing process." He explained that AI can automatically generate product description text for sellers based on known product attributes .

In addition, he explained : " Generative AI has many surprising uses beyond generating text, and we are exploring more of its uses to provide customers with more amazing experiences ."

I believe many people have heard of ChatGPT . In fact, it is just a branch of artificial intelligence, which is mainly used to create new original content rather than analyze or interpret existing data.

In eBay 's case, the company is apparently focusing first on the listing workflow, the process of posting an item on the site. Android users say that without any notification, an icon appeared above the keyboard in the eBay app . When tapped , the app expands the short description the user came up with into a long description.

eBay users do not seem to be optimistic about the new feature

On the surface, this feature seems to be very useful, but in fact, users are not very receptive to this new feature . In a Facebook group, some users expressed their opinions.

One user said, “Buyers don’t read bullet points, let alone a long paragraph of generic nonsense copy,” while another user said, “ I tested it on a few drafts today and found it to be too wordy .”

“Buyers don’t read ( product descriptions ) anyway , so why bother? Half the time they don’t even look at the pictures, ” said another seller. “If something goes wrong and someone ( buyer ) opens an item that’s not as described, who’s responsible for that ? ”

But some sellers say they are using ChatGPT for their eBay descriptions. " I've used ChatGPT for a lot of descriptions , " another seller said, adding, " Every time I try it, my items sell super fast ."

It’s important to note that eBay still has a lot of work to do if it wants to use generative AI to fundamentally change the way sellers list items on the marketplace .

Right now, eBay’s generative AI is still in early testing , though it ’s not explicitly noted in the app. When sellers use this feature , it clears the description they’ve already written in the description box . And while it may eventually be able to create nearly complete listings with titles, descriptions, and item-specific information, this obviously doesn’t include images .

In addition, eBay's generative AI currently appears to be launched only on Android mobile devices and is not yet available for iOS.

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