Amazon unveils AI chatbot for sellers

Amazon unveiled an AI-powered chatbot for third-party companies selling via its online marketplace, designed to help those sellers fix problems in their accounts and sort through useful data.

Project Amelia, as the AI assistant has been dubbed, comes alongside other efforts from Amazon, including generative AI tools called Bedrock for cloud users and a AI-bot to help shoppers find products, as it hopes to take advantage of the AI boom.

The aim with Project Amelia, Amazon said in a post, is to address three areas: knowledge-based questions, status updates and metrics, and – in the future – actively solving problems.

First, Project Amelia offers sellers a place to go to get answers and advice. Rather than searching through FAQs and help centers, sellers can ask Project Amelia a question and receive “accurate information and guidance” – the stress on accuracy is intriguing given previous problems with corporate chatbots giving incorrect information, leading to a lawsuit for one Canadian airline.

As an example, Amazon suggested a question asking what a seller needs to do to prepare for the holiday season, receiving a response that pulled in personalized sales data to suggest which items to promote, how much inventory would be needed, and key dates for Prime eligibility, as well as advice about when to run discounts and how to revamp product titles with festive terms.

Sales assistant

Beyond answering questions, Project Amelia can also pull together personalized data specific to that business, such as sales and inventory data, or compare that information with previous years. Sellers can drill down into the data to specific products or ask for a wider overview.

“Sellers need to determine how to build amazing products that meet unique customer needs, ensure compliance with different regulations and policies, advertise their products and brands to acquire and retain customers, forecast sales trends while overseeing their supply chains and ensuring appropriate inventory levels and placement, and so much more,” said Mary Beth Westmoreland, vice president of worldwide selling partner experience for Amazon, in a blog post. “While Amazon offers many powerful tools and services to assist with these tasks, we want to make it even easier for sellers to manage and grow their business.”

Those two features – asking knowledge questions and searching through seller-specific data – are already available, but Amazon said the third type of interaction was “coming soon”. That will allow Project Amelia to offer solutions to problems and perhaps eventually take action on behalf of sellers.

For example, a seller could ask the bot about missing inventory, directing it to have “someone look into this”, Amazon said.

“In the future, Project Amelia will provide additional help managing the task or even offer to solve the problem on a seller’s behalf,” Westmoreland explained.

What’s next

Westmoreland said Amazon was hoping to add more personalized responses to the system, learning from how sellers use it, and extend the knowledge base to offer more information to sellers – and even predict business requirements.

“Over time, we will build on Project Amelia’s expertise to provide sellers with more personalized responses to even the most complex questions,” she said, adding: “As Amelia evolves, it will provide a more personalized experience and will increasingly gain the ability to not only converse with sellers, but anticipate their needs, take actions, and resolve issues on their behalf.”

Amazon said Project Amelia was made using its Bedrock suite of generative AI tools that are built into AWS, including a range of foundation models from companies like Anthropic and Meta.

Project Amelia is available now as a beta in the US to a selected set of sellers with a wider rollout in the coming weeks. Amazon said it would arrive more widely to outer countries in a phased rollout later in the year. The system will be available on any page within the Seller Central dashboard, Amazon said.