The Amazing Ways eBay Is Using Artificial Intelligence To Boost Business Success
You may not have realized it, buteBay, the multinational e-commerce site, has used artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies for more than a decade specifically to match buyers with the right sellers. But that’s not the only way they use AI technology to enhance the buying and selling experience on their site. Devin Wenig, eBay President and CEOwrote in 2016, “I believe that commerce, in particular, will be the focus of some of the most immediate and exciting applications of AI.” If recent developments are any indication, eBay is jockeying to be the industry leader for AI implementations in online e-commerce.
With an estimated 179 million active buyers, 1.2 billion live listings and tens of millions of sellers across 190 markets, eBay is where the world goes shopping. The company was founded in 1995 and since then has played an important role in creating “an inclusive and accessible commerce platform.” With numerous acquisitions and technology advances over the years, eBay is one of the world’s top 10 e-commerce companies andhired Jan Pedersen, formerly of Twitter and Microsoft, as vice president and chief scientist, artificial intelligence in 2018. The company used two decades of data and customer behavior insights to train its AI algorithms. These algorithms continue to get smarter every time a buyer and seller interact on the platform.
How eBay Uses Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
eBay uses artificial intelligence in personalization, search, insights, discovery and its recommendation systems along with computer vision, translation, natural language processing and more. They take afour-pronged approach with artificial intelligence: “improve the customer experience, build and deploy the right infrastructure for the unique needs of eBay, apply core AI and domain AI science to all that we do, and ensure everything is done in service of the customer experience.”
Here are a few specific examples of how they use artificial intelligence.
Improve the buyer experience: AI-powered tools anticipate the needs of buyers, recommends items and inspires shoppers. With fine-tuned personalization abilities, the site tries to make the shopping experience customized to the needs of every shopper. A part of this was introducing Interests, the ability for shoppers to personalize their shopping experience based on their passions and styles.
Enhance search: eBay uses AI to understand the context of a search and then provide a full spectrum of relevant products. With computer vision, the company was able to add image search to its capabilities and made camera phones e-commerce devices to allow buyers to use images as a search query.
