Dive Brief:
- EBay introduced an AI shopping agent designed to personalize consumers’ browsing experiences, the company announced in a blog post Tuesday. The company has made the tool available to a small percentage of customers and will expand it to more users on a rolling basis.
- The conversational agent can appear inline on the current page when requested by a customer or through predictive messaging. It offers suggestions and advice based on customers’ shopping preferences to assist with product discovery.
- “These agentic AI advancements help us to better serve our customers with efficiency and a deep understanding of their needs, while positioning eBay at the forefront of the futuristic, agent-powered ecommerce landscape,” Mazen Rawashdeh, SVP and CTO at eBay, said in a blog post.
Dive Insight:
EBay’s shopping agent builds on recent tools the digital marketplace rolled out to enhance its browsing experience.
Ebay made the fashion category its central beneficiary for other experience improvements. Last year, the company introduced Shop the Look, which shows customers what different clothing items would look like together, and Explore, which suggests products based on inputs like size and preferred styles.
“Throughout 2025, you’ll see more innovation in fashion as we work towards solidifying our platform as the trusted destination for pre-loved branded fashion products, where customers can truly shop head to toe across a breadth of brands and price points,” eBay CEO Jamie Iannone said during a Q1 2025 earnings call last week.
EBay is not the only online marketplace making a foray into AI-powered CX. Etsy is integrating AI across its platform with an emphasis on personalized browsing and discovery, according to executives on a Q1 2025 earnings call last week. The company is tapping AI for push notifications, emails and personalized homepages.
Last month, Etsy launched a curated search experience that combines artificial and human intelligence. Relevant expert-created collections are delivered to customers via AI based on recent purchases and previously viewed items.
The marketplace with the widest breadth of AI-powered experiences may be Amazon. CEO Andy Jassy is bullish on the technology, and he expects Alexa+, an upgraded version of the Alexa home assistant with agentic capabilities, to drive broader consumer interest in AI agents.
Last year, the retailer rolled out Rufus, an AI assistant that lets shoppers handle tasks like asking about product updates and comparing items. In April, Amazon introduced Buy for Me, an agentic AI assistant that can purchase products from third-party sites without requiring customers to leave the Amazon Shopping app.
“If you believe your mission is to make customers’ lives easier and better every day and you believe that every customer experience will be reinvented with AI, you’re going to invest very aggressively in AI, and that’s what we’re doing,” Jassy said on an earnings call last week.
