eBay Draws the Line on AI | Fast Five Shorts

Ebay is banning AI shopping bots from making automated purchases on its platform.

According to ChainStorage, eBay is updating its user agreement to specifically prohibit.

We split an infinitive there.

And to specifically prohibit unauthorized agentic AI tools and bots from accessing or taking actions on its platform.

Ebay called out AI shopping agents like Amazon's Buy From Me and LLM scraping bots by name, saying they are not permitted to interact with with the platform without ebay's explicit permission.

Ebay said, quote, these rules help keep interactions predictable and safe so we can protect buyers and sellers, apply appropriate safeguard and usage limits and maintain a reliable experience, end quote.

Ken, curious.

Do you agree with the approach ebay is taking here and do you expect other retailers to follow ebay's lead?

Well, I listened to this world class podcast that talked just a week or so ago about Amazon's move in this area.

So I was doing my homework before the call and I think it makes sense for ebay to make this decision because they're a marketplace and you know, you just mentioned it earlier about, about Walmart's valuation as it relates to advertising dollars and some of those things, at the end of the day, marketplaces are, are making a lot of money off advertising and, and how they manage that relationship with their customers.

And so as a retailer, I don't think I would take this stance as a marketplace, I think I would take this stance so to me the distinct place versus retailer because at the end of the day, do I want to sell something as a, as a single brand retailer selling something?

Yeah, if I'm a, if I'm.

But if I'm a marketplace vendor where all of a sudden I'm really trying to combine the marketing message and my own search capabilities and some of those things I look at a little bit differently.

So I would say I understand why they're doing it in their case, but I'm not sure how more single brand retail solutions or those folks would really adopt this kind of strategy.

That's interesting.

I hadn't thought about that dichotomy of marketplace versus a retailer.

John, what's your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I think it's a really meaningful difference.

And when you think about ebay, obviously it's been around for a while and we think about 20 years ago when we were bidding on some collectible antique or something and you didn't know who was on the other side and that was kind of mysterious.

I think the success of ebay, one of the biggest predictors of it is do people trust the marketplace?

And it's a little different than trusting the retailer.

The retailer, you want a certain quality of goods and safety and so on.

On a marketplace, well, the seller is responsible for the, you know, the quality of the goods.

What I trust the marketplace to do is just kind of keep a level playing field and, and feel like, okay, I had a, I had a fair shot, you know, in, in my interaction, I know what's going on, I know the fees.

When I saw this headline, I thought, you know, Ticketmaster says hello.

I said it of the analogy perfectly.

Works necessarily.

But if we just tease that out a little bit, you know, we've all been frustrated with, you know, bots buying up tickets and then you're onto the secondary market and you're paying a premium price there, you know, that frustration.

And we haven't quite solved that one just yet.

Right.

But I think the analogy holds that, okay, ebay is, you know, saying, hey, we don't want our core users, right, the ones that are particularly high volume and so on, getting frustrated by this dynamic.

Let's, let's keep for now at least.

Let's keep it human to human.

And then when I think about the bottom line impact, just add one more point.

At the end of the day, yes, ebay is making a lot of money on marketing, as Ken said.

But also there's a fee, right, that's depending on, okay, how many dollars are flowing through those auctions.

And I suspect that a well programmed bot might be a little bit too rational in what they're bidding.

Wow, the human who really wants that magic, the gathering card shout out to younger John.

And they put in that vital, a little bit higher bid, a little bit more revenue flowing through the pipes.

So I wonder if there's just a bit of a bottom line play here as well as the integrity, fairness play.

That's a really interesting point too.

That's unique, particularly unique to ebay too.

The marketplace versus retail, I think is really interesting.

Me too.

I kind of.

Ken, as I'm thinking about this in the moment, in real time, I almost think it's like, yes, and the.

And for me would be what is your reputation as a retailer?

And basically your power in the marketplace too, I think comes into play here too.

Because the one thing about this is, you know, in the short term you cannot, you can take this approach and always change your mind later, but if you open it up too soon, it's hard to probably go back and unwire that.

So that's why I like this approach and the other thing I think you have to factor in too is what's the size of your IT team.

Like eBay probably has a pretty sizable IT team to create and control this.

Whereas like if you're a small, medium sized business, you have, you've probably no hope in trying to do this or it's going to be very difficult for you.

But, but Ann, what do you think?

And then we'll go back to Ken.

Well, I, I think we're, we're missing a key component of the conversation here and that is what the customer is going to buy on ebay too.

I mean like, like Ken and John both said, I mean you're going to buy collectibles too.

You're going to buy Magic the Gathering cards.

I'm going on ebay to buy resale apparel and accessories and clothing.

And that doesn't work the same way as a buy for me when I'm buying a brand new product or a bra from Lululemon.

Like Amazon's Buy for Me example was, came out, you know, months ago.

This, this requires you to go on the, like, I'm fine with the LLM search like, which it sounds like ebay is still doing.

I can still show up, have my products show up in the LLM search when I'm saying I'm looking for, you know, a hand, a yellow handbag and have the ebay results come through with.

What I don't want is a bot automatically purchasing something for me that I can't then go in and specifically inspect myself and look at the quality and look at the reviews from that person.

Like that part is, is still, I think, something that I, as ebay, as a retailer, I don't want a bot coming in and having my customers be dissatisfied with their purchase that they automatically had a bot buy for them when they didn't get to look at the, the product and inspect it themselves.

So I'm with, I'm here, I'm with Ken here.

Like, I think retailers who are selling new goods, like go ahead, buy from me, that's not a problem.

You don't have an issue with returns as much.

You don't have like those kinds of issues aren't there when you're dealing with a marketplace that especially is, is known and came on the scene selling collectibles and resold goods that have more nuance to them when you're purchasing and isn't a situation where a bot should just come and buy it and you're done.

That's interesting too.

Like it goes back to the first headline too, about biometric payments.

Like, we think everyone wants this agentic commerce, but you're saying you want it for some items and not for others.

And I'm, I'm actually wondering if the utility is there for anything and time will tell.

But Ken, what do you think?

Yeah, it's really interesting what you said there.

And I could almost see a bot that would say, oh, that seller has one star.

I'm not even going to show that, that product.

But if I want the Hummel figure that looked like my grandma's and I might take a chip, then I, I don't want that bot to eliminate that.

And that' what eBay wants to make sure they can continue to enable is somebody saying, no, the value of the Hummel figure is what I wanted because that's what grandma had.

Now, the, the only thing I had to say that I think I found ironic about this article and John kind of referenced it somehow.

Ebay can figure out that this is a bot coming shopping, but Ticketmaster can't figure out that it's a bot coming to buy a bunch of tickets up.

So I'm like, what is really, what really does exist as a capability?

And can we really stop bot buying of, of bulk tickets and then driving them in the resale marketplace?

Because I'm trying to figure out who' which side of the story here.

Yeah, and that's a topic I want to dive deep into over the next, you know, three to six months, because I think it's going to be very more, it's going to become more important with each passing week.

Ken, I think that's a great call out.