Amazon launches AI tool
The company’s new suite of seller tools, powered by a product called Seller Assistant, automates tasks ranging from product listing to demand forecasting and is designed to reduce the time sellers spend on routine operations.
The rollout comes as Amazon faces its most intense competitive pressure yet in India, competing with e-commerce rivals Flipkart and Meesho as well as quick-commerce players Blinkit, Zepto and Swiggy Instamart, all racing to capture cost-sensitive shoppers in smaller cities. Last year, Prime Day in India saw over 18,000 orders per minute, with 70 per cent more signups from tier-2 and tier-3 cities.
Amazon, which has invested nearly $40 billion in India since 2010 and has pledged another $35 billion by 2030, is making a calculated bet that AI-powered decision support — not just cheaper warehousing or faster delivery — will be the decisive edge in India’s next commerce cycle.
“Today, a small seller working from a single room has access to the same intelligence that powers the world’s largest commerce operations,” Abhijeet Kamra, director of seller experience for emerging markets at Amazon, told Business Standard. “We’re not just giving sellers new tools – we’re building AI that works with them, helping them start, manage and grow their businesses.”
Kamra said the AI push, which the company says aims to reach 15 million businesses by 2030, builds on its long-standing focus on small and medium enterprises. Early results show that sellers using the AI-powered listing tool are spending 70 percent less time on routine operational tasks, while listing quality and product discoverability have improved, he said.
Seller Assistant Suite covers the entire seller journey. For catalog creation, AI automatically generates product titles, descriptions, and attributes, and prefills up to 70 percent of required listing fields from a single image or URL. On the inventory side, machine learning (ML)-powered restock recommendations are tailored to each seller’s catalog and integrated with Amazon’s warehousing and last-mile logistics network for pan-India coverage. For advertising, the company’s customized on-demand Advertising Expert program connects sellers with AI-powered account diagnostics and personalized recommendations.
Amazon sees the evolution of AI for sellers as a continuum: from access to data to insights and decision support and finally to agentic capabilities acting on the seller’s behalf. Kamra offered a concrete example: a Jaipur-based exporter received ML-supported insights on products that were performing well in Germany. Once a seller chooses to enter that market, Amazon’s AI assists with store creation, product listings tailored to local language and preferences, and image optimization for German buyers.
The company evaluates seller results on three metrics: ease of selling, low cost of selling, and business growth – especially during major sales events.
India is one of the first markets where AI initiatives have been implemented. Kamra said the capabilities vary by country because models must be trained accordingly. In India specifically, factors including local languages; Regional events like Navratri and Pongal; Goods and Services Tax Structure; And payment preferences like a unified payment interface require local customization.
The company has also crossed $20 billion in cumulative exports from India and aims to reach $80 billion by 2030. For Indian exporters, Kamra said AI is speeding up the process across the entire journey. Through Seller Assistant, merchants can identify which products are likely to be successful in specific foreign markets. For country-specific requirements – such as environmental compliance and value-added tax regulations in European markets – the system can analyze the vendor’s list, retrieve relevant information, and complete the forms in an agent manner, keeping the vendor as the final approver.
On concerns about seller dependence on larger platforms, Kamra said Amazon’s success is linked to the success of sellers. The company aims to handle repetitive operational tasks through AI so sellers can focus on strategy and innovation, he said. For example, a footwear seller could use AI-generated insights to detect adjacent demand such as socks, or demand for leather shoes in Canada, but the decision to diversify or expand remains the seller’s own.
AI capabilities weren’t available during last year’s Prime Day, Kamra said, making the 2026 version the first real test of whether intelligent automation can translate into measurable benefits for the hundreds of thousands of small businesses with which Amazon is hoping to grow.
