Amazon unleashes Gen AI for product descriptions, curbs it for Kindle

Amazon.com has unleashed a generative AI service for sellers in its supersized souk. AI will "dramatically improve the listing creation and management experience for sellers" according to Amazon's announcement of the service, which asserts that the AI "will simplify how Amazon sellers create more thorough and captivating …

[abend0c4]

Generate high-quality content for their review

Unfortunate, in this context, that "review" has another specific meaning in relation to the Amazon store.

[John Sager]

UK consumer protection legislation

One assumes the AI knows all about that and will be very careful to avoid any false descriptions of any aspect of the tat

/sarc

[Giles C]

Re: UK consumer protection legislation

So the AI description will be…

Start——

This is a fake product

Stop——

Won’t make any difference as people will still buy it.

A quote from only fools and horses (I think)

Well of course it is genuine that’s why it says imitation (referring to a ‘leather’ jacket)

[43300]

Re: UK consumer protection legislation

"Well of course it is genuine that’s why it says imitation (referring to a ‘leather’ jacket)"

I believe the correct term for that is "vegan leather" (i.e. plastic) - seen this one used a lot for things like phone cases, Got to admire the marketing chutzpah on display here: trying to make out that it not being actual leather is actually a good thing, whereas the normal view of fake-leather is that it's cheap tat.

[Howard Sway]

more complete, consistent, and engaging product info that will enhance their shopping experiences

Get back to me when it can do "honest and accurate". Which will be never, unless it starts generating "This poorly made Chinese knock off might last 3 weeks if you're lucky".

[Falmari]

Re: more complete, consistent, and engaging product info that will enhance their shopping ....

@Howard Sway "Get back to me when it can do "honest and accurate"" Never going to happen it can only be as "honest and accurate" as the sellers description to the AI. But if it did do "honest and accurate" then the sellers of Chinese knock offs won't use it. ;)

How is AI going to make the product info more complete? Consistent, and engaging blah blah I can see, but not more complete. It can only ever be as complete as the sellers brief description, just hopefully better written.

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon has offered product from brands called CARWORNIC and TBMPOY

you forgot to add there're 10 - 150 other 'brands' 'making' 'trousers' with 'interesting' names (all inverted commas intentional) and this applies to many, if not ANY line of 'goods' pedalled on amazon, though the naming is the least of the problem for this issue. But I lost sympathy for the amazon 'ecosystem' a long time ago, so in the good-natured spirit of schadenfreunde towards the gentle giant, I'll mis-quote something about 'revolution devours its own'. Alternatively, 'cancer' works fine to describe amazon too. Question is though, who's the ultimate host / victim.

[katrinab]

Re: Amazon has offered product from brands called CARWORNIC and TBMPOY

I'm almost certain these names are made up by random letter generators that are filtered against the trademark database.

No AI involved, just the sort of random number generator you could program on a 1980s computer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Amazon has offered product from brands called CARWORNIC and TBMPOY

I think they're more than just based on a a random letter generator, there's some (not very sophisticated), algorithm in play, because all those words look and / or sound 'English' (think jabberwocky) and / or they look / sound 'cuddly', cheerfuly, positively (yeah, I know!) Not 'wrekypants' but 'hepi', 'joysi', etc.

[katrinab]

Re: Amazon has offered product from brands called CARWORNIC and TBMPOY

Just looking at some random shoe brands that come up:

Wealsex

Covidi

Wbdk

Vocntvy

Noagenjt

Mgnlrti

Dkny [actually that is a real brand]

Dghm

[Dinanziame]

Re: Amazon has offered product from brands called CARWORNIC and TBMPOY

Relevant article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/style/amazon-trademark-copyright.html

[Ace2]

The listings are completely irrelevant. Even if you order a legit product from a legit seller, their warehouse design will ensure you get knockoff crap. (Thinking specifically of coin-cell batteries.)

[frankrider]

Got ripped off…

I recently got ripped off on a wifi extender. I guess it’s my fault for believing ratings and reviews and buying an off-brand product. It was junk and would only accept a 16 character password with no special characters. The WPA2 spec is 8-63 characters with any special character. I ended up getting a proper Netgear extender. Will be returning the other junk soon if I can.

[43300]

Re: Got ripped off…

I sometimes buy bits and pieces off Amazon for work (phone chargers and USB cables, etc) - only ever get either Amazon's own brand or a recogised brand such as Belkin, and if the latter only get it from the manufacturer's own Amazon store. This minimises the chances of getting iffy crap, of which there are vast quantities on Amazon. Anyone who buys a no-name charger from some random seller with a company address in Shenzhen is asking for problems!

[Joe Gurman]

Will this mean more or fewer....

....orders on which Amazon's fly by night third party "partners" don't ship the item pictured, described, and, sadly, ordered?

[Securitymoose]

A pack of lies?

So, the pack of lies told in some of the product descriptions will be replaced by an A.I. generated pack of lies?

As usual, Amazon are continuing to rely on the consumer to root out all the dodgy kit, but for us it will be more difficult to spot, because the spelling mistakes and weird sentence construction will be obfuscated.

I’m sure it will result in many more returns that Amazon will have to pay for. What they save using A.I. will be swallowed up in postage.

[CatWithChainsaw]

>Using an unspecified large language model, Amazon will allow sellers to enter "a brief description of the product in a few words or sentences" and then "generate high-quality content for their review."

How about just write a brief description of your product and be done? See, I did less work with less middlemanning and I didn't even need the new crapware to do it. Eat that techbros.

Also, big LOL to people being honest about using LLM-generated content in books. I'd love it if Amazon ran payments on the honor system as well.

[Missing Semicolon]

Chinglish translator

So the seller provides a badly-written description, and the AI makes it look ok. It will also add details that are not true, which nobody will notice.