Askume, Sept 19 – Amazon (AMZN.O) on Thursday announced the launch of a new artificial intelligence application, saying the application will help its independent sellers develop sales metrics, inventory maintenance and product advertising.
The move is part of a broader effort by big tech companies to use technology to achieve higher levels of automation.
The software, called Amelia, can provide instant answers to a variety of questions, such as how to prepare for the holidays and how your business is performing, including sales and website traffic.
The company said the software will be able to help sellers resolve issues such as shipping delays without additional manual intervention.
In a Askume demo of the software, Amazon showed how Amelia can quickly call up seller metrics such as sales data. It also offers tips on how to prepare for a big sales holiday, including promotions and shopping ads on Amazon.com.
Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon’s vice president of global selling partner services, said Amelia is designed to provide sellers with a “personal expert for selling on Amazon.” “There needs to be an experienced expert in all of these core parts of running a sales operation.”
Amazon relies on third-party suppliers for more than three out of every five items it sells, and the company’s relationship with sellers can sometimes be tense, especially over fees.
By automating some seller customer service, Amazon may be able to more cheaply handle complaints and other difficulties that require human intervention.
The Seattle retailer announced Amelia’s launch at its annual conference in its hometown, where many of the company’s approximately 450,000 independent U.S. sellers gather to find tips and tricks and learn about new products and services.
Earlier this year, Amazon announced the addition of Rufus , a generative artificial intelligence search engine, to its website to help customers find more products . Amazon has since begun selling advertising within Rufus, suggesting it may let marketers get paid in exchange for recommending the software.
It has also launched an enterprise chatbot and is working to improve its Alexa voice assistant with updates for more conversational artificial intelligence.
Amazon ‘s capital expenditure rose to nearly $16.5 billion in the second quarter of this year from $14 billion in the first quarter, driven largely by investments in artificial intelligence.
Since the release of ChatGPT in late 2022, Silicon Valley has seen a frenzy of investment in generative AI, which can create full-sentence responses or create lifelike images or sounds based on prompts.
But when there is a lack of sufficient training data, generative AI software can invent answers, which is called hallucination. Mehta said Amelia may hallucinate, a situation that would be handled based on the severity of the error.
He said Amazon has no plans to offer advertising within Amelia. He added that the service in its current form would not be available to big brands such as Unilever (ULVR.L) , which also sells on Amazon.
Amazon said Amelia will initially be available to a small group of sellers and only in English, before nearly all US sellers gain access next month.
