Facebook Adds New AI Features to Marketplace
Facebook is making some updates to Facebook Marketplace, including new features that use artificial intelligence (AI).
Facebook Marketplace was introduced in 2016 as a place for people to buy and sell within their local communities. Today, more than one in three people on Facebook in the US use Marketplace every month for everything from new shoes to baby gear to cars and apartments.
Facebook is introducing new features that use AI for price range suggestions and auto-categorization. Here's an example: if you wanted to sell your home office chair, Marketplace could use AI to help you sell it even faster by suggesting you price it between $50-75 based on what similar chairs recently sold for. It will also automatically categorize the chair as "furniture" based on the photo and description, so that you don't have to.
The company is also testing camera features that could use AI to recommend products you might be interested in. Say you liked your friend's headphones and wanted your own; you could snap a photo of the headphones and Marketplace's AI technology could recommend similar listings for sale nearby.
In the future, AI could help simplify tasks like completing an outfit or home design project.
In addition to adding new AI features, Facebook has added a variety of content from businesses including cars, home rentals, home services as well as shopping and deals from e-commerce merchants.
Today, vehicles is one of the most popular categories for Marketplace globally, alongside furniture and electronics.
Thanks to AI technology, Facebook is working to detect and remove items that violate its policies by analyzing the images, content, and context within a listing.
Buyers and sellers can now rate each other to signal whether they had a good or bad experience, as well as leave feedback on where they can improve such as response time, friendliness and reliability. In addition, community ratings help create a better experience by promoting good behavior.
Facebook's community is also able to report content that doesn't belong on Marketplace or violates Facebook's Commerce Policies.