TikTok's Big Ecommerce Play

Plus eBay, HubSpot, Slack are all AI

Author

Jo Lambadjieva
September 12, 2023

Hey there! Another Tuesday, another dose of AI Ecomm content curated and written especially for you! Enjoy!

Why are you reading this?

In this newsletter, I summarize the top AI ecommerce and Amazon developments so you can stay up-to-date in just a few minutes. I do the reading so you don't have to. Consider this your weekly AI ecommerce update to save you time while keeping you informed on what matters most.

TL;DR

  1. TikTok Is Coming For Your Ecommerce Pie

  2. Ebay’s New AI Baby

  3. AI Is A Very Very Thirsty Business

  4. Tons Of Your Favourite Tools Rolling Out AI Features

TikTok’s Big Ecommerce Play

TikTok is making bold strides to become a major ecommerce platform and take on the likes of Amazon and Ebay. They’ve started to stir the pot big time, with more reports coming out, that links leading from TikTok to outside ecommerce sites like Amazon are being banned.

So what’s the deal? Last week TikTok started testing a new in-stream shopping tab in the US. The Shop tab displays a scrollable feed of products. The top section promotes “Today’s Deals” featuring currently trending or viral products. Then TikTok is supplying these viral products through their own supply chain, directly through partnerships with Chinese manufacturers. A bit cheeky, eh?

This builds on TikTok's existing in-stream shopping features that allow users to easily purchase products seen in videos. To further enhance the shopping experience, TikTok is leveraging AI, including testing a visual search tool that lets users take a photo of an item to find similar products in TikTok Shop. With tailored recommendations powered by AI, TikTok aims to predict customer intent and turn viral video trends into direct sales.

What does this mean for ecommerce sellers?

TikTok has been a major driver of sales for a lot of Amazon and ecommerce sellers. If it indeed stays on course to ban links to Amazon, Ebay and D2C sites, this would definitely mean headaches for sellers and probably a lot more need for Google PPC and stronger brand identity in order to help the user journey.

eBay Is On The AI Product Listings Game

eBay is rolling out a new AI tool that allows sellers to generate product listings just by uploading a photo. The tool automatically writes a title, description, category, price, and other key details. It builds on eBay's efforts to integrate AI into the selling process, like auto-generating catalog descriptions. eBay says the tool aims to help new sellers overcome the challenge of creating comprehensive listings.

However, longtime eBay sellers have complained about the poor quality of the AI-generated text, which often contains mistakes or misleading information. Sellers say the descriptions are overly verbose and repetitive, rather than concise and focused on item details. They argue most buyers want direct, accurate information, not fluff. While eBay looks to AI as a way to attract more sellers, the move risks alienating its existing seller base if the AI quality remains low.

What does this mean for ecommerce sellers?

If you’re an eBay pro, don’t get too excited, it seems like you still need to do this on your own. For the eBay newbies, perhaps a viable shortcut, but either way, most likely the AI needs some work. That said, this is the future, so probably across all ecommerce platforms, this will become a standard procedure for creating listings.

Food For Thought: AI’s Environmental Impact

AI needs tons of water. Literally. Generating advanced AI like ChatGPT requires immense computing power and water for cooling.

In 2021-2022, Microsoft's global water consumption spiked by 34%, which researchers attributed to rising AI demands. Google also reported a 20% increase in water usage during the same period. The data center uses up to half a liter of water for 5 to 50 ChatGPT queries. Just think about that for a minute… 5 queries in ChatGPT is 500ml of water.

AI revolution doesn't come cheap on resources. Amid global environmental concerns, the tech's water consumption will be a tough nut to crack, but it’s something everyone who is using AI should be aware of.

The Quick Read:

  • Anthropic, has launched a paid version of its Claude 2 chatbot, Claude Pro, in the US and UK. Costing $20/£18 monthly, it offers priority access, early feature access, and increased messaging capacity. Claude Pro allows five times more usage than the free tier, with users able to send around 100 messages every eight hours. For context, Claude 2 is the next best thing (and sometimes better) after ChatGPT4.

  • HubSpot is launching HubSpot AI, enhancing its marketing tools with AI features like AI Assistants and AI Agents for improved customer service.

  • Zoom introduces AI Companion, an AI assistant designed to enhance productivity and collaboration. Assisting with tasks like email writing and meeting summaries, it aims to optimize work efficiency and team connectivity. Integrated into various Zoom features, it offers a conversational interface and tools for meeting prep, phone analysis, and communication coaching. That said, check out the tools section for the free AI that would probably beat Zoom at this.

  • Slack is introducing a new AI tool, "Slack AI", set to test this winter. It can summarize channel discussions, recap threads, and search for specific answers within messages. The tool will generate summaries for channels and can retrieve discussions on particular topics. Additionally, Slack plans to test "Slack lists", aimed at rivaling planning apps, allowing team project tracking.

  • Apple is spending millions of dollars a day on AI.

  • Check out Time’s 100 in AI list.

  • Action Time: Read this to grasp how large enterprises will use data and AI the power up.

Today’s Guide:

If you’ve not used ChatGPT’s Code Interpreter, today is a perfect day to start. And below is a Cheat Sheet you can use to quickly get your head around it.

I post about AI in Ecom and Amazon on LinkedIn daily, you can follow all the content here.

The Tools List:

TLDV.IO - A solid, free alternative to Zoom. Records your calls and then provides a transcribed summary of what you’ve discussed and agreed.

Keplar.io - Brand Growth through simulated customers

ImageToSEO AI- Upload any photo and their AI will craft optimized alt-text.

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