eBay Looks To Boost "Item Intelligence" Using AI To Solve Regulatory & Compliance Problems
eBay is looking to boost their "item intelligence", using AI to help solve regulatory and compliance problems on the platform.
A new job ad posted on eBay's careers page shows the company is looking for a Lead Product Manager, Item Intelligence to "lead the product strategy to evolve our platform capabilities, translate regulatory and compliance problems into AI / ML use cases and ensure eBay is a safe, trusted and easy to navigate marketplace."
Sellers would absolutely agree that eBay needs a lot of help in this area - the current AI systems in place to review reports of counterfeit, illegal, dangerous and/or policy violating listings certainly leave a lot to be desired.
Last year, eBay rolled out a new process for reporting listings and content that violate its policies, but users worried bad actors had already figured out easy ways to fool AI enforcement bots, allowing possibly dangerous or illegal items to remain on the platform.
Liz Morton
Longtime community contributor WastingTime101 posed the following question to eBay community staff at the time:
About 3 weeks ago several listings were reported for brand name misuse. Sellers in China have decided to spam the site with listings labeled as Clorox brand, but they're just generic products from China. The actual Clorox brand product was discontinued several years ago.
View this link. 29 out of 30 results are very obviously violating the brand name misuse policy.
The reports were reviewed by AI and AI determined there was no problem with the listings.
Can you pass this to the appropriate product teams to see if this is a loophole in the programming?
See how it says Clothing,clorox ? Is AI failing to see the misuse of Clorox because it's tied to another word with no spaces? Or is AI ignoring the title and only looking at the brand item specific which says unbranded?
And frustration with eBay's AI obviously getting it wrong on reported items continues to grow - a few more recent examples:
eBay is using AI to field reports of violations, and it's failing miserably
I'm very concerned about eBay's ineffectual use of AI because sometimes it absolutely requires a human to decipher whether or not a reported item for sale is prohibited.
For example, red and blue LED emergency vehicle lights are prohibited on eBay, but now and then they still slip under the radar because savvy sellers have learned lots of tricks to cheat the system. For example, they won't outright say the lights they're selling are red and blue, but they might post a photo with red and blue crayons next to the lights, or they'll take a photo of the product sticker on the light housing, and the sticker will reveal the color of the lights in the model number (eg. "J917-46 R/B".)
Artificial intelligence isn't smart enough decipher these tricks! It takes a human to understand what's being sold, what's the product photos are revealing, and how sellers are cheating the system. I've had success getting red and blue emergency lights pulled off the platform in years past, but since eBay started using AI, lots of reports are bouncing back with, "These listings have not been removed. This determination was made using automation or artificial intelligence. ... Please don't reply to this message."
There are now several active listings on eBay for professional-grade red and blue emergency vehicle lights because the stupid AI has no freaking clue what it's looking at. And the form responses I've received were clearly final decisions as they've provided no option for me to appeal.
It is therefore accurate, and unfortunate, to announce that eBay's relegation of member reports to AI fosters the aiding of the dangerous crime of police impersonation. I'm not angry with the AI because it doesn't know any better. I'm angry with eBay because they do know better. What a shame.
counterfeit coins growing on eBay
I'm a U.S. coin collector and I've been buying & selling coins on eBay for around 15 years. Unfortunately I've ran across way too many illegal U.S. counterfeit coins during this time, mainly Morgan Dollars...
...Reporting these to eBay via their REPORT THIS ITEM process is like shooting BBs at an Abrams tank. It's a total waste of time because I believe this process is manned by AI and they always come back & say there is nothing wrong with the listing. And I've found reporting these through one of their customer service reps is also a big waste of time with no action taken.
Selling counterfeit U.S. coins is a federal offense and I would really like to see eBay take a stronger stance on this issue. There are too many naive people who buy these coins thinking they are authentic but are basically having their money stolen ... and eBay financially benefits from this which is wrong.
While eBay managed to wrangle their way out of an EPA lawsuit seeking to hold them liable for prohibited pesticides, restricted chemicals and illegal emissions control chat devices using Section 230 protections, they know that the matter of marketplace accountability for items sold through their platforms is far from a settled matter.
Liz Morton
The Trump administration and Republican politicians and both the federal and states levels have shown great interest in weakening or getting rid of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 - the legislation that eBay, Amazon, Walmart and other marketplaces often use as a "get out of liability free" card when faced with product liability claims.
For example, Trump's pick to lead the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, has come out swinging against Section 230, largely aimed Big Tech battles over social media censorship.
Charles Gasparino
Carr, who wrote the Project 2025 chapter on the FCC, has also backed efforts to amend the the law, saying “The FCC should work with Congress on more fundamental Section 230 reforms that go beyond interpreting its current terms. Congress should do so by ensuring that Internet companies no longer have carte blanche to censor protected speech while maintaining their Section 230 protections."
eBay also continues to lobby at the state and federal level against new laws that would weaken Section 230 protections or seek to hold marketplaces as well as sellers accountable for product liability issues.
Liz Morton
But in case those lobbying efforts fail, eBay will need a whole lot more "item intelligence" to accomplish regulatory compliance at scale and I don't envy whoever takes on that job as they will have a Herculean task ahead of them.
What do you think of eBay's current attempts to use AI to police policy violations and illegal or dangerous items on the platform? Let us know in the comments below!
