eBay Search By Image Malfunctions, Shows Wildly Irrelevant Results
eBay app users report the Search By Image feature appears to be malfunctioning, returning wildly varied and irrelevant results that do not in any way match the items being searched for.
Who do we talk to at Ebay about this, I believe we have all had a camera hijacking. I am taking a picture of a stuffed animal and getting thousands of pictures of skylander toys and random gamer toys. Its an obvious hijacking and very specific.
I tested it and took pictures of all kinds of other plush animals and got the same sellers and items once again, even taking pics of clothing showed me only plants and incense in my search results !! Ebay needs to stop this now!! How can I source quickly without my camera !!!
Same thing is happening to me and others. Not sure what to do or who to contact either, just getting the same thing, uninstall reinstall,check this and that but nothing fixes the issue! You can take a photo of a hair brush and get lawn mowers and minions as the results. The photo search plays a huge roll in listing items for sale, I hope they address this soon!
When trying to search an image I get random listing not even close to what I am looking for. I have tried many simple items to see and it keeps showing pretty much the same thing. I have tried on both iPhone and android. It is a nice feature to have and curious if its localized or everybody is have the issue. Hopefully it can sorted out quickly .
I tested the image search feature myself on the Android app, version 6.167.0.3 and got the same obviously wrong, random results.
When a similar issue occurred back in March, some sellers found that it was related to having "lockable filters" turned on causing the app not to use the "best match" sort option.
You may have to temporarily disable "Lockable filters" in the Filter Customize menu to get good image search results.
Apparently, even though image search appears to be defaulting to "Best Match", if you have lockable filters enabled, your image searches will not actually show you "Best Match" results.
If I have Lockable filters enabled and perform an image search, the results shown are nonsense, but the instant I disable lockable filters the results re-sort to provide reasonable looking results.
However, this time I've tried that fix and it does not appear to be working - lockable filters were already disabled and even turning them on and back off again did not change the results.
Relevancy has been an ongoing issue ever since eBay first introduced the search by image feature in 2017, with the functionality even being removed from the app for several months in 2021 because there were "inconsistencies" in results.
When they finally re-enabled search by image months later, the results were even less useful than before and the feature often struggled to identify truly relevant or similar items in search.
Liz Morton
In addition to search by image, eBay built a "scan to list" tool in 2021 for collectible trading card games like Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! but for some reason were never able to expand the tool to include sports trading cards or other collectible card games.
Liz Morton ~ Founder
More recently eBay has been testing a "find visually similar" feature on the View Item page that supposedly uses AI image recognition to suggest similar items to the buyer.
Liz Morton ~ Founder
However, the results show, like search by image, this feature still needs a lot of work.
While the general category may be similar to what the buyer was looking at, the actual visual similarity is not even close on many items.
eBay has also recently introduced an AI-powered image enhancing tool to the app, but the process is very laggy & often fails to load, not to mention glitches causing inverted colors when trying to use the background remover.
Liz Morton
While eBay's search by image and other AI tools are often either broken at launch or introduce bugs and glitches that break other features, Chief AI Officer Nitzan Mekel-Bobrov and Chief Technology Officer Mazen Rawashdeh are busy touting the dubious "Best Generative AI Experience" award they recently received from a marketing and research firm trying to sell "industry recognition programs" to Fortune 500 companies and recruiting new PR people to "leverage media connections" to "position eBay as a top-tier technology company."
Liz Morton
eBay has not yet acknowledged this latest problem with image search in the app, but I'll update as soon as more information is available.
In the meantime, let us know in the comments below if your eBay Search By Image is malfunctioning and returning wildly irrelevant results!
