Online marketplace and auction site eBay has released eBay Motors, a new app that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to list a car in under five minutes, according to a report by The Verge.
The app is a replacement for the previous eBay Motors app, which was discontinued in 2015, and it’s available in the U.S. for both iOS and Android.
A customer can begin the process of selling a car by taking a picture of the vehicle’s license plate, which will automatically pull up information on the car, such as make, VIN and model. The user can then upload photos or videos about the car right into the app, and the app will automatically sort them into different categories, like interior, exterior and engine or drivetrain.
This is the first time eBay has allowed direct video uploads, and the company thinks it will help to drive sales. If photos are well organized, eBay says, it helps people trust the listing. It also says that its platform and algorithms have a 95 percent accuracy rate and were built with Firebase, a Google platform.
The Motors app will also have a personalized homepage and advanced filtering and search tools.
The online marketplace company wants to eventually be able to use AI technology on descriptions, where a user could give basic details and the AI would flesh out the description.
In other news, eBay last month agreed to sell StubHub, its ticketing business, to Viagogo Entertainment. The marketplace decided to look into selling StubHub after two activist investors encouraged the company to leave businesses that were not related to its core marketplace.
The sale of StubHub to the Swiss ticket reselling marketplace is reportedly for $4.05 billion in cash.
The firm agreed to look into selling its internationally-focused Classified business as well as StubHub. It also brought on board members as part of its settlement with Starboard Value LP and Elliott Management Corp. Elliott had noted that the classified business of eBay could sell for $8 billion to $12 billion and StubHub could sell for $3.5 billion to $4.5 billion.
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