Dive Brief:
- Amazon has upgraded its Seller Assistant tool, introduced last year, with agentic AI capabilities, the e-commerce giant announced Wednesday. The tool is currently available to U.S. merchants at no cost and will be introduced in more countries in the coming months.
- The enhanced Seller Assistant can monitor merchant inventory levels, analyze demand patterns, optimize shipments, identify slow-moving products before they incur storage fees and suggest price markdowns. It also helps sellers manage issues like product safety regulations, customer service metrics and compliance.
- An agentic AI upgrade is also impacting Amazon’s Creative Studio for advertisers. The upgraded tool, which is able to analyze a seller’s brand and products, can generate custom ad concepts, brainstorm ideas and produce ads, all from a conversational chat with the seller.
Dive Insight:
Amazon’s upgraded Seller Assistant is aimed at smoothing out the merchant experience on the e-commerce marketplace.
With the upgraded tool, sellers can generate an inventory plan with personalized recommendations, optimize their product distribution for the fastest delivery speeds and identify possible compliance issues. The tool can also spot potential new product categories, recommend marketing strategies and advise merchants on entering new markets, according to Amazon.
“As our agentic AI capabilities evolve, they will integrate more seamlessly across the entire selling experience,” Mary Beth Westmoreland, vice president of Worldwide Selling Partner Experience at Amazon, wrote in a company blog post. “This evolution will help sellers spend more time focusing on product innovation and customer relationships while Seller Assistant handles making selling in Amazon’s store more efficient, strategic, and successful.”
These improvements come alongside other AI-driven tools Amazon has introduced in recent years to help sellers run their operations. In 2023, the company introduced an AI product description tool for merchants to help them write titles, item descriptors and bullet point lists for product listings.
Amazon has also deployed AI for customer-facing features. Earlier this year, Amazon used generative AI to make its Alexa voice assistant more “conversational, smarter and personalized.” The retailer has also developed AI tools for generating product recommendations based on customers’ interests and finding products using visual search.
As Amazon leans heavily into AI technology, the company has admitted this will likely reduce its workforce. In a letter released in June, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the company “will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today” due to the company relying more on generative AI. In the future, the company will cut its corporate workforce in line with “efficiency gains” from using AI, Jassy wrote.
