Does eBay Magical Listing AI Tech Live Up To Hype After Year And A Half Delay?
UPDATE 4-15-25
Jon at Flippin' Aint Easy on YouTube took my example one step further, dropping my Starbucks mug pic below into Grok with no text context clues and asking it to identify the item and write an eBay optimized title and bullet point description.
Grok got everything right, including the size & type of muge! As Jon astutely asked in the video - after a year and a half delay, why can't eBay do that?
After an initial rollout in Germany last month, eBay is expanding Magical Listing AI tech to all private/personal accounts in the US and UK as well - after year and a half delay, does it live up to the hype?
Back in September 2023, CEO Jamie Iannone wowed investors with a demo of a Magical Listing tool he claimed would allow sellers to "just take a picture and let AI do the rest."
Liz Morton
Here's what Iannone told investors at Goldman Sachs Communacopia & Technology Conference 2023 after showing them a mocked up video of the Magical Listing AI experience:
The version we showed there is a product that's currently an employee beta, which is, how do I figure out what a product is and do all the hard work so the seller doesn't have to do anything?
And I'll just tell you a story. We're cleaning up my garage with my wife, and she finds this old remote control from a stereo I had 25 years ago. And she's like, "Okay, throw this out. Like, Jamie, we don't have the stereo. It's been 25 years." And I'm like, "Okay, better idea, let me sell it on eBay."
So, I literally just hold up my phone to it, and it figures out what this remote control is, it figures out what stereos it's compatible with, it writes the description for this remote control, and I listed on the platform. It says to price it at $30. I priced it at $30. And guess what, a week-and-a-half later, this remote control sells for $30. That would have absolutely been in the trash without this technology.
And here's the video mockup that was shown in that investor presentation, as well as to the public in a press release:
Notice how the mockup does in fact do what Iannone said - after uploading the images, the Magical AI fills in the title, description and all other information without the seller having to do anything else, promising "listings in seconds."
Since that 2023 announcement, eBay has slow walked the actual launch while rolling out less impressive tools, like bulk AI listing, that still didn't quite meet the mark of where this presentation set expectations.
Liz Morton
Finally, after a one and a half year delay, eBay announced today that Magical AI listing is now available to all private/personal accounts in the US, UK, and Germany. with plans to eventually integrate it into business accounts as well.
Apr 9, 2025 By: eBay News Team
Creating high quality listings with the right set of details can be time-consuming for sellers. To help, eBay has simplified the listing experience, integrating our magical listing technology with a guided, mobile-friendly listing flow to improve the ease, speed, and quality of listing creation for sellers.
This simplified listing experience now integrates our magical listing technology, which allows sellers to take or upload a product image and use AI to help fill in item specifics. And, eBay has further simplified the experience with a guided, mobile-friendly listing flow.
Where the previous mobile listing flow started with a text-based search for similar listings within eBay’s catalog for sellers to edit and customize, this new experience starts with photos and a title.
It then leverages AI automation, maximizing image match and inference capabilities to suggest product details and suitable categories according to eBay’s guided, task-focused pages, so the seller can review and approve content and list more quickly.
We can see the press release is already downgrading expectations, saying the seller will need to provide pictures and a title, which is not exactly the capability that was shown in the mockup presentation in 2023.
This press release also includes a demo video of how the AI Magical Listing Tool works, confirming that sellers do still need to enter a title of their own to give the AI context clues - which would not be particularly helpful in Iannone's example of a random remote control that you don't know anything about - in order to get the listing started.
So I decided to take eBay Magical Listing AI for a spin myself.
First, I uploaded an image of a mousepad and, just like in the video, it did require me to manually enter at least some keywords in the title section before it even offered the option to use Magical Listing.
Unfortunately, the Magical Listing experience wasn't able to fill in the category automatically based on that title, so I had to do that manually too - choosing from a few suggestions, including an oddly out of place recommendation to put it in automotive tools and supplies.
Finally, it's time to let eBay's Magical AI image matching and inference capabilities do their job!
Unfortunately, it appears to be matching mostly on keywords, not the actual image, and only returned suggestions of variation listings - none of which appeared to have a variation that would actually match my item.
This heavy reliance on text/keyword/context matching instead of actual image matching isn't a new problem for eBay.
Whether it's in watch list feeds, the AI powered Explore discovery tool for fashion, eBay's search by image feature that has been available since 2017, or anywhere else that eBay claims to offer "find visually similar" capabilities - users consistently report these tools often provide irrelevant results.
Liz Morton
I selected one of these non-matching variations, just to see what the rest of the Magical Listing process looks like.
It proceeded to suggest an optimized title and fill in item specifics based on the variation I picked, then prompted me to use the existing AI capability to write a description and continue through the rest of the listing flow, which matched what was shown in the demo video.
For further testing, I added additional words to the title, making it say "Turtle mousepad with wrist rest."
That was enough to get it to at least show single items instead of variation listings, but the relevance was even worse and it appears to have ignored the word "turtle" all together as well as not actually matching based on the image.
I wanted to give Magical Listing a fair chance, so I decided to try again with a different item - this time a Starbucks coffee mug.
Once again, I had to manually enter a title but at least on this one eBay was able to automatically select a category for me - though opinions may vary about whether this should have been in collectibles or if there would have been a more appropriate category.
Unfortunately, we can see that once again the AI leans heavily on text matching inference rather than actual image recognition, resulting in a selection of Starbucks mugs that don't actually match the one in my image.
At that point, I selected "continue without a match" and the listing flow returned to the usual, non-magical experience to which sellers are accustomed.
If it sounds like I'm being overly critical, chalk it up to a year and a half delay while smaller competitors like Mercari, Depop and Poshmark beat eBay to the punch on AI-assisted image-based listing.
When I tested Poshmark's Smart List AI in October 2024, I was pleasantly surprised at how well it was able to identify key item aspects like color and style, creating a useable title and description automatically from only a picture - just like eBay promised but has so far not actually delivered.
Liz Morton
Even better - when I tried to throw Poshmark Smart List a curveball with a picture of a hand crafted, one of a kind purse I had custom made to order from a local leathersmith many years ago, it not only identified the colors and material, but also the unique sailing ship design, and provided an appropriate nautical themed description.
Compared to that experience, eBay AI Listing just doesn't feel very...magical.
Have you tried eBay's Magical AI Listing tool? Let us know about your experience in the comments below!
