Amazon is using generative AI through its Starfish project to transform its Marketplace product listings.

The project aims to synthesize information from multiple data sources, including external websites and images, to generate complete, correct, and consistent product information globally.

This initiative supports Amazon’s goal of becoming the best source of product information for all products worldwide.

How Starfish Enhances Amazon Marketplace for Sellers and Shoppers

Since 2023, Amazon has introduced AI tools to assist third-party sellers in creating stronger product descriptions from minimal inputs such as URLs.

Starfish enriches product data using large language models, filling in missing details, correcting errors, and rewriting titles, bullet points, and descriptions to improve customer relevance.

The project also includes AI-generated product images and video ads to enhance listings.

Driving $7.5 Billion in Extra Sales Through AI Optimization

According to an internal Amazon document, Starfish is expected to contribute an additional $7.5 billion in gross merchandise sales in 2025.

This boost comes from improving product conversion rates and expanding the selection available on Amazon’s Marketplace.

Automating and enhancing product listings helps sellers save time and drives growth for both merchants and Amazon.

Broad Ambitions: Making Amazon the Ultimate Global Product Information Hub

Starfish’s broader ambition is to make Amazon the top global source of all product information.

The AI tool plans to collect product data by crawling, scraping, and mapping items from approximately 200,000 external brand websites.

This data aggregation would allow AI to auto-fill product descriptions, enabling a more comprehensive and accurate catalog.

AI Tools and Data Mapping: The Technology Behind Starfish

Amazon’s web crawler, called Amazonbot, collects information to improve services such as Alexa.

While it is unclear if Amazonbot is directly used in Starfish, the project involves mapping external data to Amazon’s catalog to support features like the “Buy for Me” recommendation system.

Amazon is conducting A/B testing to compare sales between AI-enriched and non-enriched products and plans to expand Starfish to additional countries later this year.

PHOTO: IBJ.COM/GETTY IMAGES

This article was created with AI assistance.