Amazon has ramped up its use of artificial intelligence for third-party sellers with the launch of an “always-on” agent capable of automatically managing pricing, inventory and product performance.
Amazon has upgraded its Seller Assistant platform with new AI-powered ‘workflows’ that can continuously monitor a merchant’s business and respond to changes without them needing to be logged into Seller Central.
Sellers can instruct the agent in plain language to carry out ongoing tasks, such as flagging when product ratings fall below a certain level, monitoring competitors’ prices or identifying when stock needs replenishing.
More complex workflows can also be set up to respond to opportunities automatically, although Amazon said sellers can determine whether the technology simply makes recommendations or takes action on their behalf.
It said all actions are recorded through an audit trail, while merchants can set their own limits and approval requirements.
Amazon has also added persistent memory to Seller Assistant, allowing the technology to learn individual merchants’ pricing patterns, inventory cycles and growth goals to provide more personalised recommendations over time.
The AI service is available to sellers at no additional cost and remains optional, Amazon vice president of worldwide selling partner experience Mary Beth Westmoreland told Reuters. Sellers can also control how much information they share through the service.
Amazon opens seller data to Claude
Alongside the upgraded assistant, Amazon has unveiled a new Selling Partner plugin that enables merchants to connect their Amazon business with external AI tools.
The plugin is launching through Amazon’s Quick AI platform and in beta with Anthropic’s Claude, allowing sellers to access data including sales performance, stock levels and product listings from within the AI services they already use.
Amazon said the integration means external AI assistants will not only be able to analyse seller data but, with approval, perform actions on a merchant’s behalf.
The plugin is initially available in beta to sellers operating on Amazon’s US marketplace, with an international rollout set to follow.
Amazon claimed more than 90 per cent of its selling partners already use third-party AI tools to help run their businesses, while Seller Assistant itself now has hundreds of thousands of active users.
The latest changes form part of a wider push by Amazon into so-called agentic AI, systems designed to carry out multi-step tasks with limited human intervention.
Amazon said Seller Assistant can now draw on information spanning areas including inventory, advertising, listings and compliance, as it looks to reduce the amount of manual administration required from businesses selling through its marketplace.
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