
Ask HN: Beside chatbots, what are the best application for AI in ecommerce? - matysanchez
AI is a trending technology right now. There are a ton of companies applying AI in different industries like autonomous cars and chatbots.<p>What do you think are the best application for AI in e-commerce and who is doing it well?
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smt88
> _There are a ton of companies applying AI in different industries like
> autonomous cars and chatbots._

No, there are companies _marketing_ AI in those industries. AI as most people
think of it doesn't yet exist. The most famous example is the massive fraud
that is/was IBM's Watson[1].

It's common for companies to say they're AI when they're actually doing text-
search, crowdsourcing work from real humans, or doing statistical regressions
on a data set.

Even autonomous driving is not exactly AI because it can't react well to novel
situations. Waymo is way ahead of the others because it has massive amounts of
training data, not because it's AI is so much better.

If true AI existed, Google and Apple would certainly have it, and your phone's
voice assistant wouldn't be laughably stupid 80% of the time. Facebook might
also have it, and their chatbot initiative would've been more successful.

> _What do you think are the best application for AI in e-commerce and who is
> doing it well?_

This is like saying what is the best application for being smart in
e-commerce. It's so broad that it's impossible to answer. Theoretically AI can
do tasks that previously only humans could do, but it can do them faster and
cheaper.

That's applicable to literally everything in e-commerce (and any other
services industry).

1\. [https://www.rogerschank.com/fraudulent-claims-made-by-IBM-
ab...](https://www.rogerschank.com/fraudulent-claims-made-by-IBM-about-Watson-
and-AI)

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matysanchez
Thanks for your answer and share your good information with the community. I
am not looking for the "best application for AI in ecommerce", I want to learn
what other companies are doing with AI in the ecommerce field. I just search
for a few hours angel.co, looking for companies that really apply AI, but
dind't find anything interesting, most of them are applying marketing
automation selling as a AI.

~~~
smt88
I think you misunderstood me. What I meant to say is that AI doesn't exist.
The companies claiming to sell it are lying.

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takanori
Personalized items based on past purchases. In clothing I’d settle for items
in my size based on past purchases.

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matysanchez
Thanks for your answer. Do you know any company doing this? and maybe selling
as a service/product? We all know that Amazon, Alibaba, eBay use AI for a lot
of stuff related to product recommendations and so... but I want to learn more
about startups and small companies doing this.

~~~
takanori
Check Shopify AppStore. There are a lot of e-commerce plugins

