Credit: eBay (edited)
Once a titan of 1990s e-commerce, eBay saw its dominance wane as Amazon conquered the online retail world with sheer scale and convenience. Now, the marketplace famed for unique finds and collectibles is betting big on AI, aiming to supercharge its platform and reclaim relevance. The strategy services both sides of its marketplace, leveraging decades of data to offer a more tailored experience than mass-market giants or less tech-savvy peers.
Personalized discovery: eBay announced it's rolling out a new AI shopping agent designed to transform how users find items across its vast inventory. This intelligent assistant offers real-time, hyper-personalized product suggestions and expert guidance, reacting to direct queries or predictively surfacing relevant finds as shoppers browse. The goal is an effortless (and even fun) discovery process, moving beyond simple chatbots to an interactive agent that anticipates user needs.
Empowering sellers: On the other side of the transaction, eBay has grown its mobile listing process with what it calls a 'magical' AI-powered tool. Sellers can now start listings with just photos and a title, letting AI analyze the image, suggest product details, and populate item specifics, significantly streamlining the creation flow. Early U.K. tests reportedly cut the steps needed to list products by half, making it faster and easier for individuals and small businesses to sell.
An AI-infused future: eBay execs are clear about their ambitions, with CTO Mazen Rawashdeh stating in an announcement that these "agentic AI advancements help us to better serve our customers...positioning eBay at the forefront of the futuristic, agent-powered ecommerce landscape.” Chief AI Officer Nitzan Mekel-Bobrov echoes this, adding in the same announcement that he believes "the whole shopping experience will be AI-infused in the future.”
Reclaiming relevance: The focus comes as collectibles and fashion, key eBay strongholds, continue to drive growth, suggesting AI can further sharpen its edge in these specialized markets. By embedding sophisticated AI, eBay can leverage its unique position in secondhand goods and collectibles, a market where discovery and trust are key. While competitors like Craigslist remain low-tech and Amazon focuses on breadth, eBay's AI push—developed with a Responsible AI team—could offer a differentiated value proposition, particularly as another challenger, Meta, also invests heavily in AI for its Marketplace.