Amazon is expanding its AI capabilities with the Starfish project, a major initiative aimed at transforming the online shopping experience by automating and improving product information across its platform. The project, which is based on generative AI, seeks to create more accurate, detailed, and consistent product listings by gathering data from across the web, including external websites and images. This effort is part of a broader move to enhance user experience and streamline the process for third-party sellers.
The goal of Starfish is to ensure that every product listing on Amazon is complete, accurate, and easy to understand, whether the product is sold by Amazon or a third-party seller. By automating the creation of these listings, Amazon believes it can reduce the time and effort required for sellers to manage their inventory, allowing them to focus more on selling. For shoppers, this means faster access to clearer, more accurate product listings, which should help them make better purchasing decisions.
Starfish builds on earlier AI tools Amazon tested in 2023, and now the company is scaling these efforts across millions of listings. The AI will also collect data from 200,000 external brand websites by crawling, scraping, and mapping their content to Amazon’s catalog. While it’s unclear whether Amazon’s own web crawler, Amazonbot, is used to power Starfish, the company confirmed it’s already supporting its “Buy for Me” feature, which recommends products from external websites and allows shoppers to buy them directly within the Amazon app.
Although the project promises improvements in both user experience and seller efficiency, there are concerns about how much data Amazon is collecting and how that data is used. As the AI gathers more information from the web, there may be questions about the transparency and ownership of this data. Additionally, the potential for AI-generated content to vary in quality could impact trust in product listings.
In summary, Amazon’s Starfish project signals a major shift in e-commerce, with the potential to change how product information is gathered, created, and shared at scale. While it offers conveniences for both buyers and sellers, it also raises important questions about data usage, transparency, and the role of AI in shaping the online shopping experience.