eBay Expands Magical AI Bulk Listing To More Categories, But Results Still Show Limitations
eBay is expanding AI-powered "Magical Bulk Listing" tool to include more categories, but a recent live demo at the Winter Seller Check-In shows the tool still has limitations and is far from the "take a picture and let AI do the rest" experience CEO Jamie Iannone has been promising for over a year.
The tool originally launched in July, but could only be used to list in Sports Trading Card categories.
Liz Morton
Trading card sellers who tested out the initial version expressed some positive opinions of the feature, but also pointed out they experienced lag in loading when creating multiple listings at once and disappointment in still having to manually fill in some data or double check to make sure eBay's AI got it right.
It was announced in last week's Winter Seller Check-In that the tool is now expanding to most categories on the platform in a phased rollout that should be available to all sellers over the next month.
The breakout session dedicated to Magical Bulk Listing featured a live demo using the tool to create listings for clothing items, which disappointingly showed those problems with still having to fill in a lot of manual data have not yet been solved.
When the eBay program managers leading the session uploaded multiple images, the tool was able to select an appropriate category, but did not create a title and many of the item specifics were also either completely blank or a menu with multiple options which would still require the seller to click the drop down and select the correct information.
Once a title was manually typed in, the AI did pick up a few more item specifics from those keywords, but that is not particularly new, innovative or impressive as the standard listing form has been pulling keywords from titles to make suggestions for item specifics for quite some time.
Watch demo:
Tellingly, in the Q&A part of the session, several sellers asked questions about what the value proposition of this tool is and how it actually saves time or is more efficient than using the standard bulk listing tool or single item listing form - indicating they are not completely sold on the "magical" aspects of the feature.
eBay has been promising sellers (and investors) that magical AI and image recognition powered listing capabilities are "coming soon" for over a year, but the company has struggled with execution.
Liz Morton
CEO Jamie Iannone told investors in September 2023 a magical tool that would allow sellers to take a picture and let AI do the rest would be "coming soon" while providing a slick mockup video but not actually doing a live demo of the tool that was in "employee beta testing" at that time.
The version we showed there is a product that's currently an employee beta, which is, how do I figure out what a product is and do all the hard work so the seller doesn't have to do anything?
And I'll just tell you a story. We're cleaning up my garage with my wife, and she finds this old remote control from a stereo I had 25 years ago. And she's like, "Okay, throw this out. Like, Jamie, we don't have the stereo. It's been 25 years." And I'm like, "Okay, better idea, let me sell it on eBay."
So, I literally just hold up my phone to it, and it figures out what this remote control is, it figures out what stereos it's compatible with, it writes the description for this remote control, and I listed on the platform.
It says to price it at $30. I priced it at $30. And guess what, a week-and-a-half later, this remote control sells for $30. That would have absolutely been in the trash without this technology.
But a year later, that version of AI listing still has not been seen in the wild by the vast majority of sellers and it appears eBay is instead trying to pull a magical, abracadabra switcheroo by moving the goalposts to this much more limited and still apparently not ready for primetime bulk listing tool instead.
Given the current state of eBay's image recognition technology and persistent troubles with relevancy in the search by image functionality, users have been skeptical eBay can pull off a truly magical, time saving and more efficient AI listing tool.
Liz Morton
Meanwhile, smaller competitor marketplaces are already beating eBay to the punch with Mercari, Depop, and Poshmark all offering their own versions of the "just take a picture and let AI do the rest" listing experience.
I recently took Poshmark's Smart List AI for a spin and while there were still a few instances of needing to manually provide additional information, it was a much better experience than shown in this eBay demo and I was pleasantly surprised at how much it got right - including correctly identifying brands, colors, styles and unique themes/designs to create very useful titles and descriptions and fill in most item specifics.
Liz Morton
What do you think of eBay's Magical AI bulk listing experience? Let us know in the comments below!
