Seller Assistant is designed to predict demand and manage inventory. (Amazon)
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Amazon.com Inc. has revamped its artificial intelligence agent for online merchants, an upgrade that could help sellers navigate a holiday shopping season clouded by the trade war between the U.S. and China.
The souped-up Seller Assistant is designed to predict demand and manage inventory — suggesting how many products a merchant should order, when they should offer discounts to help boost sales as the season progresses and when to pull inventory from Amazon facilities to avoid storage fees.
Amazon.com Inc. ranks No. 1 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest logistics companies in North America, No. 15 on the TT100 list of the largest private carriers and No. 1 on the Top 50 Global Freight list.
While the first version of the agent mostly responded to merchants’ queries, the upgraded model is designed to be more proactive by actually suggesting selling strategies.
At Amazon Accelerate, Amazon’s annual conference for sellers, the company introduced agentic AI across the seller experience, transforming how sellers manage their business. Learn more. ⬇️ https://t.co/RFygagT5mS
— Amazon News (@amazonnews) September 17, 2025
It was trained on 25 years of shopping behavior encompassing the supply chain disruptions of the pandemic, along with periods of lofty inflation and high interest rates, Amazon Vice President Dharmesh Mehta said in an interview.
The goal is to help merchants navigate volatility. “It’s going to save sellers money and it’s going to save them time,” Mehta said.
A range of e-commerce consultants and software companies already provide similar services, but Amazon is offering the Seller Assistant for free to U.S. merchants, with plans to deploy it globally in the coming months.
Amazon has long used machine learning to manage inventory, helping the company sell more products with fewer people. Other online marketplaces like eBay Inc. have invested in AI to streamline the process of posting, describing and pricing products on the site. Walmart Inc. in July hired an Instacart Inc. executive to a newly created role meant to accelerate its own adoption of AI tools.
Walmart ranks No. 1 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest private carriers in North America.
President Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again tariff announcements have generated significant uncertainty heading into the busy holiday shopping season. Many small businesses are turning to short-term lenders for help paying tariffs even as the U.S. continues to negotiate trade terms with China.
