Packages ride on a conveyor belt during Cyber Monday, one of the company’s busiest days at an Amazon fulfillment center on December 2, 2024 in Orlando, Florida.
Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo | Getty Images
Amazon on Wednesday introduced an artificial intelligence agent that will help third-party merchants operate their online businesses.
The company is adding agentic capabilities to Seller Assistant, its AI tool for third-party sellers, meaning the software can take action on a merchant’s behalf with their permission, Amazon said. The update was announced during Amazon’s annual Accelerate conference for sellers in Seattle.
Amazon said tools like Seller Assistant free merchants up to “spend more time focusing on product innovation and customer relationships,” while its generative AI tool handles more tedious operational tasks.
Amazon has released several AI tools for third-party sellers, which account for more than half of all goods sold on the site, such as a product listing generator and an image and video generator for ads.
Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon’s vice president of worldwide selling partner services, told CNBC in an interview this week that 1.3 million third-party sellers have used its generative AI listing tools, which can produce about 70% of what makes up a product listing on its webstore.
“It really gives the seller, in some sense, a team of experts,” Mehta said. “An expert in listing and in pricing and promotions and supply chain, all the things that a small business normally has to either try and learn on their own, hire someone to be an expert, pay someone to be an expert, or sometimes just accept not being that good at, which is not ideal.”
The company said its enhanced Seller Assistant goes beyond answering queries and is capable of coordinating inventory orders and business growth plans, as well as implementing fixes for account issues, potentially helping merchants avoid costly suspensions.
Over time, Amazon expects to add more agentic capabilities based on seller feedback, the company added.
Generative AI has evolved from image and text generators to agentic AI tools that can complete multi-step tasks for users with minimal supervision. Outside of its third-party marketplace, Amazon’s AI lab in San Francisco in March released a preview of an agent that can take action in a web browser.
Seller Assistant uses Bedrock, a software tool that lets users access large language models from Amazon and other companies like Anthropic and OpenAI.
The company doesn’t currently plan to charge merchants to use Seller Assistant, Mehta said.
Sellers pay Amazon to access its in-house fulfillment services, account management services and other offerings. It’s become a sizable business for the company, bringing in $40.3 billion in the second quarter.
Amazon last September launched the first iteration of its AI assistant for sellers, codenamed Project Amelia at the time, allowing merchants to troubleshoot issues with their account, get advice on inventory planning and brainstorm listing titles, among other tasks.