Amazon relies entirely on generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) for its community of independent sellers.
Announced on Thursday (19 September) at his Amazon Accelerate Event in Seattle, a new GenAI initiative aims to loosen the complexity that independent sellers face when using the platform and continues His current topic is connecting independent sellers with retail and logistics technology.
Project Amelia is a personal assistant designed to help sellers streamline their business processes and scale their companies more efficiently.
“As technologist I have always believed that a pragmatic approach is necessary,” Mary Beth WestmorelandVP Worldwide Selling Partner Experience, told PYMNTS. “It can’t be about technology as an end in itself. The outcome that technology should achieve is practical applications.”
With millions of third-party sellers using the platform, Amazon’s marketplace accounts for over 60% of the company’s e-commerce revenue, and the Accelerate event featured numerous announcements and upgrades to the services Amazon provides its sellers to guide and succeed.
“Running a global selling business on Amazon involves managing a variety of tasks, from product development and marketing to regulatory compliance and inventory management,” said Westmoreland. “Amazon offers several tools and services to help with these tasks, but Project Amelia is designed to simplify the process even further.”
A demo of Project Amelia showed the ability of a seller to make a general request, which could then be translated into an intelligence report with advice on expansion, new inventory and or Logistics information.
For example, if a clothing salesperson asks: “What Product lines should I expand?” Amelia returns an answer tailored to the company’s current inventory as well as Market trends. When the seller requests a sales status report, they will receive a complete report on current sales, year-to-date updates, and performance against forecasts.
The AI can be accessed from any page of Amazon’s Seller Central platform, where merchants manage their Amazon businesses.
Project Amelia is based on Amazon Bedrock, the of the company Foundation for scalable GenAI applications. This infrastructure provides access to the latest base models tailored to specific business use cases. In Amelia’s case, it combines enormous amounts of general world knowledge with Amazon-specific expertise.
According to Amazon, this allows Amelia to provide more than just standard AI support; the assistant is fully informed about the unique challenges and opportunities of selling on Amazon. Amelia’s responses are designed to help sellers navigate the intricacies of the platform, and over time the AI will provide more personalized guidance.
“The long-term goal for Amelia is to not only provide advice, but also to anticipate sellers’ needs and proactively solve problems,” Westmoreland said.
Project Amelia functionality revolves around three main areas: knowledge-based questions, business metrics updates And problem solving.
- Knowledge-based questions: Sellers can ask Amelia for advice on a variety of Topics ranging from seasonal preparation strategies to product compliance. For example, if you’re asked, “What are the most important things I need to do to prepare for the holidays?” Amelia will provide best practices and personalized recommendations.
- Status updates and metrics: Amelia can quickly retrieve key performance indicators such as sales data, customer traffic And product-specific metrics. Sellers can ask, “How is my business doing?” to get an overview of current performance and drill down even deeper by asking more specific questions, such as about the performance of individual products.
- Actions and problem solving: In the future, Amelia will not only diagnose problems, but also offer solutions or take action on sellers’ behalf. For example, if a seller notices a discrepancy in their inventory data, Amelia will help investigate the problem and potentially resolve it automatically.
The current beta version of Project Amelia is available to a select group of US sellerswith plans to expand the program to other US sellers in the coming weeksBy the end of the year, Amazon plans to launch Amelia in more countries and add support for languages other than English.
As The As AI evolves, Amazon sees Amelia as a more proactive solution in managing sellers’ operations. Amelia reduces the time and effort sellers need to manage their business, allowing them to reinvest that effort in their growth.said Westmoreland.
“This is just the beginning for the Amelia project,” said Westmoreland. “As a seller start to interact This will allow the technology to learn and evolve, resulting in more comprehensive and personalized responses with deeper insights and advice specifically tailored to sellers’ business needs. We are also continually improving and refining Project Amelia with additional knowledge and capabilities, fulfilling the vision of making it a great selling assistant and trusted advisor that helps sellers succeed and achieve even greater success in the Amazon store.”
