Magical Listing Revisited: Has eBay Finally Closed the AI Gap?
During eBay's Q4 2025 earnings call, CEO Jamie Iannone revealed the company has rolled out the "next generation" of AI Magical Listing for sellers - will new tool finally fulfill the "just take a picture and let AI do the rest" promise he made in 2023?
After Iannone showed investors a mocked up demo video in September 2023, it took over a year and a half for AI-powered Magical Listing to roll out to sellers.
But despite the extra time for development, the results were less than impressive, often failing to correctly identify items and still requiring a significant amount of manual entry from the seller to complete a listing.
Liz Morton
During this week's Q4 2025 earnings call, Iannone announced the next generation of Magical Listing, saying rather than trying to build an AI tool on top of the legacy code of the existing listing infrastructure, eBay is now leveraging AI from the start to autonomously build listings from images alone.
In Q4, we began rolling out the next generation of our magical listing experience. A true breakthrough that moves beyond AI assisted tools to a fully AI native architecture.
Unlike prior iterations where we integrated generative AI technology into legacy workflows, this new experience leverages AI agents from the start to autonomously build listings from images alone.
Now, any smartphone camera can act as an AI agent that guides you on which photos to take for your specific product to increase the likelihood of a sale. In the background, AI agents create the title, category, and item specifics by leveraging advanced models and our product knowledge graph.
AI also provides intelligent pricing recommendations based on real time transaction data, helping sellers balance velocity and price realization to optimize their cash flow.
The early results have been powerful after making this the default listing experience for all new and reactivated listers on iOS and Android in the US.
So I took the next gen Magical Listing AI for a spin myself, starting with the same mousepad I used for my initial test.
The original Magical Listing tool was unable to identify items from a picture alone. Instead, sellers had to start by manually entering a title to provide context for the AI to draw from.
This new iteration doesn't require manual title entry, it really does start with an image and uses AI to generate a listing.
The AI correctly suggested Used for the condition and also correctly identified the sea turtle and ocean theme - but incorrectly identified the item as a ceramic decorative plaque, not a mousepad.
The title and item specifics were then filled in based on that incorrect identification.
One thing that the display doesn't make entirely clear is that the description is not filled in automatically. The seller has to tap the title section to access it and it's blank by default - if the seller doesn't enter anything, eBay will just copy the AI created title and display it as the description in the finalized listing.
And again, since the AI incorrectly identified the item, the AI description tool also generated incorrect information.
Just to give it a fair shot, I deleted that draft and started from scratch taking a new picture of the same item - which eBay AI then identified as a fridge magnet.
Next, I tried the other item I used in my original test - a Starbucks ceramic mug.
Again, the AI correctly identified the condition as Used.
And in this example, it also correctly identified the item - though again, the description was left blank by default.
I tested with a few other items as well and discovered that if the AI isn't able to identify it from the image, the seller will instead be presented with the standard listing form to fill out manually.
Final Thoughts
The next generation AI Magical Listing tool is generally better designed and more functional than the previous iteration - less manual entry, more "let AI do the work for you."
However, that only works if the AI correctly identifies the item, otherwise the seller will have to delete all the wrong information filled in by eBay and redo the listing themselves.
And while this is definitely an improvement, it simply puts eBay on par with smaller competitors who beat them to the punch like Mercari, Depop, and Poshmark.
Liz Morton
But since eBay has also announced they are buying Depop from Etsy in a $1.2B all cash deal, maybe they'll get an AI boost in addition to an Active Buyer injection from that acquisition.
Liz Morton
The new Magical Listing tool is currently available to new/occasional casual sellers in both the Android and iOS versions of the eBay app with no current timeline for when it may be expanded to additional sellers.
Have you tried the latest generation of eBay AI Magical Listing? Let us know in the comments below!
