Everyday AI Podcast – An AI and ChatGPT Podcast - EP 239: How AI Is Changing The Ecommerce Landscape

Episode Date: March 29, 2024

How will AI change the way we shop online? Whether you own an e-commerce business or not, AI is changing the entire online shopping experience and will have an effect on all of us. Jo Lambadjieva, Founder of Amazing Wave, joins us to discuss how AI is impacting e-commerce. Awesome Stuff From Our Partner, NVIDIA -Register for the FREE virtual NVIDIA GTC Conference or buy tickets to the in-person event and fill out this form here: https://www.youreverydayai.com/nvidia-giveaway/Newsletter: Sign up for our free daily newsletterMore on this Episode: Episode PageLearn More in today's newsletterJoin the discussion: Ask Jordan and Jo questions on AI and e-commerceRelated Episodes:Ep 82: Using AI To Grow Your E-commerce PresenceUpcoming Episodes: Check out the upcoming Everyday AI Livestream lineupWebsite: YourEverydayAI.comEmail The Show: [e-mail] with Jordan on LinkedInTimestamps:01:50 Daily AI news05:00 About Jo and Amazing Wave07:37 AI's impact on e-commerce10:35 AI changes consumer behavior in searching/browsing14:10 Amazon Rufus and user experiences.19:42 AI enhances business productivity and product development.22:39 AI revolutionizes e-commerce through customer persona understanding.25:16 AI-generated content may erode customer confidence.29:15 Prepare for major changes in online shopping.30:44 AI impact on email and e-commerce discussedTopics Covered in This Episode:1. Current State of AI in E-commerce2. Democratization of E-commerce3. Behavioral changes of customers due to AI4. Importance of Customer Persona in AI5. Future Predictions of AI in E-commerceKeywords:AI in e-commerce, Jo Lambadjieva, e-commerce automation, customizing customer experience, e-commerce sellers, content targeting, democratization of e-commerce, AI backlash, optimizing processes, Amazon stores, data analysis, process automation, ChatGPT, Zapier integrations, customer journey, Amazon AI, PPP course, ChatGPT course, e-commerce professional, online consumer behavior, Google's search generative experience, Amazon's chatbot Rufus, online shopping behaviors, AI news, AI chatbot Grok, AI startup Anthropic, White House AI guidelines, AI's impact on e-commerce, human touch in AI use, AI-generated content.Send Everyday AI and Jordan a text message. (We can't reply back unless you leave contact info) Start Here ▶️Not sure where to start when it comes to AI? Start with our Start Here Series. You can listen to the first drop -- Episode 691 -- or get free access to our Inner Cricle community and all episodes: StartHereSeries.com Also, here's a link to the entire series on a Spotify playlist. 

This is the Everyday AI Show, the everyday podcast where we simplify AI and bring its power to your fingertips. Listen daily for practical advice to boost your career, business, and everyday life. Meet Firefly AI Assistant, now live in Adobe Firefly, the All In One Creative AI Studio. Just describe what you want to create and the assistant handles the rest, orchestrating multi-step workflows across Photoshop, Premiere Express, and more in one conversational interface. You direct the outcome. The assistant accelerates execution. How is AI going to change the way that we all shop online?

It's something it might impact you a lot more than you think. You know, you might say, oh, okay, well, you know, I don't own an e-commerce shop or, you know, I, you know, just shop, you know, online here and there. Well, whether you know it or not, generative AI is going to completely change how we all. shop online, how we all interact with the internet, how we all interact with the products that we all love. All right. So we're going to talk about that today and more on Everyday AI. Thanks for joining us. My name is Jordan Wilson and I'm your host. And Everyday AI is for you. We're a daily live stream, podcasts, and free daily newsletter helping all of us, not just learn generative AI, but how we can all actually leverage it to grow our companies and to grow our careers.

If you're listening on the podcast, thank you as always. If you're joining us on the live screen, yeah, I might have a little camera problem today. No worries. We're still going to be bringing you the value that we always do. So let's go ahead and remind you to go to your everyday AI.com if you haven't already and sign up for the free daily newsletter. I tell people it is like a free generative AI university. We have almost 230 back episodes now, no matter what you want to learn about, whether it's sales, marketing, entrepreneurship, e-commerce.

We have dozens of experts in each of these fields. So make sure you go and do that. But before we do, let's talk about the AI news today. All right. So there is a new GROC model. So GROC, the AI chatbot from Elon Musk's X platform, formerly called Twitter. Anyways, GROC is releasing a new version. So GROC 1.5 is testing right now.

much higher than the original GROC 1.0 chatbot. And it's benchmarking closer to Mistral's models, but still much further below Gemini, GPD4, Claude, etc. So GROC 1.5 will reportedly be available next week and can only be used inside of the Twitter platform. And I said this in my 2024 predictions, but GROC really might not be worth paying attention to. But we'll see when it's, you know, announced next week or released next week. All right, our next piece of news, pretty relevant to today's topic, at least the parent company, but Amazon is investing billions more into Anthropic. So Amazon is making its largest outside investment in its three decade history, investing $2.75 billion

more into AI startup Anthropic. So this represents their second batch of funding with their previous $1.25 billion investment made in September, bringing up their total investment into Anthropic to $4 billion. So this investment is Anthropics or this investment shows that Amazon's continued interest in the rapidly growing field of Gen A.I, which has seen a record $30 billion invested across more than 700 deals in 2023. So Anthropics to a suite of AI models, Claude 3 has outperformed Open AI in Google on industry benchmark tests, solidifying its position as a leader in the field. All right, last but not least for our AI news, the White House has released new guidelines on how the government can use AI.

So the Biden administration here in the U.S. has issued new guidance on how government agencies can use artificial intelligence with the goal of ensuring safe and responsible use of the AI technology. So this includes appointing a chief AI officer, growing the workforce in AI and requiring agencies to implement safeguards by December 1st. The guidance requires agencies to also appoint a chief AI officer. Yeah, that's a thing. And to grow the workforce in the field. And if the safeguards aren't in place by December 1, all of these agencies must stop using it. However, right now there are obviously still questions about the specifics of the safeguarding process and who even has the expertise to approve the AI technology for use.

All right. So there's a lot more news and a lot of other things you're probably going to want to pay attention to in the world of generative AI on our newsletter. So make sure to you go to your everyday AI.com. Sign up for that free daily newsletter for more AI news. But you didn't come in here to talk about AI news. You're here to learn about how AI is changing the e-commerce landscape. All right. So you're not going to have just me blabbing on about this. We have an expert. So please help me welcome to the show. Bring her there we have her. All right. So we have Joel Lambejave. I knew I messed that up, Joe. The founder of Amazing Wave. Maybe Joe, I'll have you introduce yourself and tell us what you do at Amazing Wave. Sure. Hi, Jordan. First, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. My name is Joe Lambejewa. That was a really good to try there, Jordan. It was pretty bad. No, no, no. I've had people butcher my surname much worse than you. So you did well. So I am the founder of amazing way. We essentially help e-commerce sellers and Amazon sellers to adopt AI into their processes. And also we educate them on how to use AI in the best way possible to get best output for their e-commerce businesses. So that's kind of in the nutshell. I love that. And give us just an overview, Joe, of the type of clients that you work for.

Yeah, sure. So we work with a range of clients. So like, for example, we work with Amazon sellers, so third party Amazon sellers, vendors, as well as Amazon agencies, actually bigger e-commerce retailers, e-commerce tech companies. So anything that has to do with e-commerce marketplaces, we help with that. I love it. I love it. And, you know, how long have you been working in the e-commerce space? because I feel especially since the pandemic, it's really just blown up. But, you know, how deep does your experience go in the space? Yeah, sure.

I mean, I have been actually in the e-commerce space for more than 10 years. So initially, I actually work with variety of agencies to help their clients build e-commerce strategies, how to grow. Then I set up my first Amazon agency called Emergent Retail to help vendors. And after that, I set up an entire Amazon team,

for an Amazon aggregator. And so now it's actually just kind of the sort of the work and the learning from these 10 years combined with my geekery about AI, which is my newest fashion. So there you go. I love it. I love talking. I mean, that's what everyday AI is all about. It's a safe place for all of us who deal in the geekery of AI.

Speaking of that, Joe, you know, with your experience in e-commerce, how do you think, you know, that today, how has a safe place? has AI changed the e-commerce landscape? Oh, I mean, this is why I got into this in the first place. So actually, my journey with AI started, obviously, when ChatchipT came out and I got really excited and I started experimenting because at that point I was managing a team and we had a lot of complicated processes. Some take took a lot of time specifically around, for example, listing optimization for

Amazon stores and say data analysis, et cetera. And so I started tinkering around and seeing, okay, so how can this tool help us optimize some of these processes? And a lot of my experience came from just learning and practicing, like, with actual case studies of, okay, so can we make this process to an extent automated with CHAPT? And so I think the first thing is just how much e-commerce sellers can use AI to sort of automate a lot of current kind of more simple processes. You know, there is so much they can do with chatypT integrations, with Zapier integrations with chatypT and just that on one hand.

But I think there is just a general bigger topic around e-commerce and AI, which is about the changing landscape of how we buy products as customers and how the companies that we buy products from, are we shaping our sort of like customer journey, customer experience? To give you one example, you know, my sort of bread and butter is Amazon. And Amazon has been sort of on a kind of a year-long transformation, integrating more and more AI into the customer journey as we move throughout 2023 and now in the beginning of 2024. Adobe just introduced an entirely new way to create, bringing the power and precision of its creative suite into one conversational experience. Meet Firefly AI assistant, now live in the

Adobe Firefly app, the all-in-one creative AI studio. Powered by Adobe's creative agent, Firefly AI assistant lets you start with your vision, just describe what you want, and shape the outcome as it takes form with the assistant. The assistant orchestrates multi-step workflows, drawing on 60-plus pro-grade tools across Adobe Creative Cloud apps, including Photoshop, Illustrator Premiere, Lightroom, and more to help bring your ideas to life. You can also get started with creative skills, a growing library of pre-built workflows for common creative tasks like batch editing photos, creating mood boards, portrait retouching, and creating social variations.

Every step the assistant takes is visible so you can refine, redirect, or take over at any time. You stay in the driver's seat as the creative director. Adobe Firefly AI assistant now in public beta. See it today at 5. Firefly.adobie.com. And, you know, Joe, I think it's probably important to talk about both sides of this here because, you know, yeah, I'm sure there's a lot of people out there who maybe have worked in e-commerce or,

you know, maybe they are in sales and now a lot of those sales maybe are coming online, but also just the prevalence of everyone shops online now. You know, how do you think, you know, at large, and we'll dive in a little deeper, but how on the consumer side, on those not working, you know, in e-commerce, how might AI already be impacting, you know, the products and the processes in which we're all buying things online? Sure. I mean, it's really, it's really fascinating. So if you are a consumer now and you want to buy something online, most likely you would have an idea of the product and you either go to Google and search for the specific keyword and browse through many different results on the Google search page, you click through many different

results, you go and either use their shopping sort of feature on Google, or you would just directly go to the specific results page. And there will be a lot of browsing sort of interaction, so you'll go from one side to the other side and that way find a product. Alternatively, you would go to, say, something like Amazon or Walmart, you would type in a keyword. Amazon is going to give you a results page with different products, and then again, the browsing happens. What AI now essentially creates is a completely different sort of behavior from consumers. So, for example, Google wrote out their search generative experience, which is their AI-powered version of Google search.

And with that, you would type in not just a keyword, but maybe an entire question. And as a result, Google is going to then aggregate and create a summary with recommendations within the actual search sort of interface. And so instead of actually going and clicking through many different websites, you would just get the answer to your question in already on the Google search page, which is a completely different experience. On the flip side, Amazon, which is what I think is going to be really impactful, is then it wrote out their chatbot called Rufus, which about maybe a month ago or a couple of months ago. and that basically means that instead of you typing, okay, let's say hair straighteners into Amazon, you would type in what are the best hair products for curly hair. And so Amazon would look at all of your previous interactions as a user.

It will look at like who you are in terms of like what you have purchased before, any other demographic data that it has. And as a result is going to then give you, like, You can essentially chat with this chatbot, find out more about features specific, and then you'll give you a set of different results. So instead of like, okay, hair straighteners, search, here is a bunch of hair straighteners, you have like a whole curated results from Rufus, which may not be just about hair straighteners. It can be like, for example, products for curly hair.

I don't use any hair products. So I am like completely plueless. bad example. But like, yeah, it would just give you a whole curation of different results based on who you are as a person from all of the previous interacting, browsing, and purchasing data. So it's really interesting and it's a completely different shift in terms of how to think about finding a product even as a consumer. Yeah.

And, you know, for those of us on the live stream here, and thanks as always for joining us. If you have a question, please get it in now. but you know, I'm showing kind of on the screen this Amazon Rufus and kind of this chat experience that Joe was just referencing. Joe, at least, you know, I follow this stuff daily. It seemed like initially, you know, Rufus had kind of mixed reviews. And I think this is probably at least, hey, where do I do the majority of my shopping, at least here in the U.S.? I think a lot of people, it's Amazon. But maybe just talk a little bit more about this.

Is Rufus available to everyone? and maybe what are some of the pros and the cons that you've seen since you work in the space and maybe what we should all expect? Yeah, so Rufus is not yet available to all users. It's currently being rolled out in a beta across US. So it's not available in Europe or any of the other markets and generally it's being tested. I also read, like I think the Washington Post actually posted a really good article, essentially going through the experience of using Rufus.

And what I would say is, yes, it's probably a bit rubbish right now. But you have to think about it this way. This is just the beginning. This is just the sort of the beta that Amazon is rolling out. And it's not something that is just going to go away overnight. They will keep, and obviously you need to think about it this way. This is a large language model. It learns from data.

And so the more customer data there is and the more interactions there are with a chatbot, the better it's going to get. and don't forget that Amazon already has this incredible, insane wealth of data about everything that you have ever done on Amazon. It's not just purchases, but browsing. They record even how long have you looked at one specific picture. The amount of data they have on every single customer is so rich that, yes, maybe right now these chat bots are a bit garbage,

but over time, I think they're going to get really good. And with more interactions, they're going to get more and more tailored. So I reckon we should expect that at least this year, by the end of this year, this is going to become a much more useful and sort of typical way to shop online. How long do you think that this transition is going to be? And what maybe are some of the, for us not working in the e-commerce, right, space, but we can learn from an expert such as yourself.

So maybe how long until we all see this? And what are maybe some things we might need to look out for, right? With all of this data, do we have to do anything to safeguard that data? Or is it just this is the future of how online shopping works? Well, I mean, honestly, like you, in terms of the data question, reality is that Amazon already has this data about you. Like every time you go on Amazon, you give out your data with every single interaction. so it's not nothing new from that point of view.

What is interesting is then how does the AI then processes and takes this data, but that is a whole different kind of like philosophical, ethical and whatnot questions. So I want to discuss this, but I think from timelines, my prediction is that by the end of 2024, this should be something that you would, like, basically, at least customers in the US would definitely be able to use. And I'm fairly sure that by the end of the year, it should be much, much better in terms of actual usability. I think it's just about, I guess it's just about like the whole customer experience you're going to have. It would really shift the way we think about decision making.

Like, you know, what Rufus is doing is, you know, right now, obviously, as a consumer, you would go into Amazon and you would look at keyword and then you're going to start browsing through reviews, price points and sort of make your decision based on all of these different dimensions. But with Rufus, a lot of these are going to go away and actually it's going to be to the chatbot to decide based of the information you give it about features you're looking for, for it to decide what to show you and what to recommend. In a way, it's much more customization and it's much more tailored to what exactly you input. But again, I guess it goes back to sort of the idea about prompting and knowing how to prompt. You will only get the best output if you know how to prompt well the AI you're working with.

And so, I mean, it's a question like, you know, would everyone like to do this? Maybe not in the beginning, in the future. Maybe they'll be used to this and the AIs will be so good that they will be spewing out the right answer, I guess. Yeah, yeah, just taking more of our money, right? Just quicker. You know, for those, Joe, that are working on the e-commerce side. So maybe they have an e-commerce shop or they're trying to, you know, turn their side hustle into something profitable.

What are the big changes that they should be putting into their own operation? What should they be looking at? Because it seems like a lot of this, it's the big giants, the, you know, Google, Amazon, etc., are just making these changes. So what should those working on the e-commerce side be doing to prepare and to not get, you know, crushed by all of these new gen AI advancements in the e-commerce space. Yeah, I mean, I genuinely think that this is a really amazing time to be alive and to work in any sphere because AI just gives us so much capability.

I mean, you know, Sam Altman himself sort of predicts that in the future there will be billion dollars like solopreneur companies because, you know, AI provides you with so much capability, which before you wouldn't have as sort of, you would need to hire person, A, B, and C to, like, do all of these different tasks. While now with AI, you can upload so many different tasks, I don't think you can completely sort of remove the human out of the process, but you can definitely take a lot of sort of the more basic tasks and automate them. So as an e-commerce sellers, I think one of the coolest things that I've seen recently is how

e-commerce sellers start using AI to inform or develop their products. So a lot of product development is happening in a combination when using, let's say, chat ChachyPT to like understand really features and products. And when you start, for example, feeding something like Chachypity or Claude 3, like product reviews and getting this rich data about what customers like and don't like about product and what the current products are missing. And then getting these insights and then feeding them into like, let's say, an image generator like mid-journey, you can imagine how powerful this is. Like before you would need, let's say, a product developer to actually go and develop the

prototype of the product. I mean, I'm not saying that you don't need that right now, but you can have a pretty good idea about exactly what you want and then work with a manufacturer to develop it. So that's just one way. I think another way is just anything to do with written content. soon, very soon, like product image content, and actually there's already really good tools out there that develop images for products, but specifically, like, copy-based content is a no-brainer sort of integration with AI, whether it's your website content or your email campaigns or

your social media posts, anything like that, you can absolutely offload it on, on AI. I think there's just so many different users I can, well, fill up the whole hour. Well, you know, I'm curious even for, you know, you gave us a couple there. Helping in product development, I think is something that, you know, all companies selling online could at least use it as a sounding board or second, you know, second set of ears, so to speak. And you just talked about any website content. I'm wondering even for you or for your clients, what is that one generative AI? I feature that you've gotten the most return on. Maybe it's something you've already mentioned, but maybe not.

What would that one thing be for you? I can't pick. The thing is like you can't put this one because everything is connected. If you actually, if you are an ecommerce seller, a seller, you would, for example, look at all of your rich data about customer interactions. You can use that as a basis to sort of train like your, like let's say your AI. and then have different types of outputs, whether it's, for example, advertising optimization,

or it's like optimizing, let's say, your product listing on Amazon or any e-commerce website, or it's basically understanding your customer better. I think one of the major shifts that since AI is around, let's say Amazon sellers and just e-commerce sellers started like paying much more attention to the customer persona. So before that, I think the really advanced sellers would really understand who their customer is because they maybe will have more rich data about their customers.

They will have, let's say, customer surveys or, let's say, a lot of traffic that will give them a lot of that rich data. Now you don't even need that. So this is, again, democratization of e-commerce, I would say, because you can use AI to, like, feed whatever data you have, extrapolated and then actually understand very well. who that person that you're selling is, is, and then target your content and everything else you do from that point of view. You know, Joe, I'm wondering because you, you know, you kind of reference this thing that, you know, Sam Altman said that, you know, hey, with AI, there's

going to be single person, billion dollar companies. And you kind of walked us through all, you know, some of the different ways that generative AI can help, you know, people who maybe aren't as experienced as you. But on the flip side, is there a problem maybe to this all, like that maybe it's, It's too easy for anyone, you know, with no product experience, no, no background in sales, no, you know, e-commerce know-how. Is there maybe a downside to all of this? And might there be a backlash from companies that use too much AI in their e-commerce efforts? Yeah, no, absolutely.

I think this is the scary bit that I think is going to come. My prediction in the next six months is a lot of companies are now getting really excited. about using AI. And even there was a about three months ago, there was a perfect example of like how AI can backfire. So there was an article that came out which basically showed all of these Amazon listings, which had a title, I'm sorry, as an AI model, I can't blah, blah, blah, right? And so it was it was basically a bunch of sellers who had used chat chip PT to like optimize their listings, both upload them without at all checking what the output is, and then that thing was live. And so this just shows that, you know, when you use AI without necessarily putting the

effort to like, do, like, you know, get a good output and really put the human in the loop, that basically leads to terrible, like really awful generic results, which are then like kind of spewed to consumers. And over time, thank you, this is exactly what I mean. And I think over time, this is just going to me erode a lot of customer confidence. So I think customers will get really, I guess, fed up with like awful, like generic AI generated content, AI generated images. I think people would generally revolt against this.

And I think because of that, because of this sort of, how can I say, snow like sort of avalanche of poor content, like customers, consumers would really crave, like, human, genuine interaction. And so I think brands and like e-commerce brands and actually just generally companies should use AI, but you should always have that human touch and you should always understand that a customer in the end wants genuine interaction and not everything to just be. robot-created bullshit. Sorry, I don't know if I'm allowed to say that. Hey, it's all good. We're a live show, so it doesn't matter. Yeah, and kind of what we have on the screen here is what Joe was talking about is, you know, listings, and I'm sure there's thousands of them where literally the title

of the listings is, I apologize, but I cannot complete this task. So it's not, you know, a description of a chair. It is, you know, it's an error message from chat GPT. So, you know, I'm wondering, Joe, for, you know, you know, consumers, right? Because you're, you're an industry insider. So you understand how, you know, different companies are using AI. And I even know some people, you know, generate images. And they're like, hey, you know, I don't have this product yet, but I'm going to use an image and kind of pre-sell it. You know, so what steps maybe should the average consumer go through to

even make sure that, you know, whatever e-commerce seller that they're, you know, working with is, is legitimate and putting out a good, solid product. Oh, I mean, that's a tough question. I mean, honestly, I think generally, if you are, say, shopping from Amazon, having, like, looking at, like, the reviews for a product would generally help. And obviously, this is where we actually, like, then go into the sort of, like, the really important point around building a brand and, like, consumers trust brands. And so this is actually not just e-commerce.

This is for any industry. And so the point around having a solid brand, having multi-channel interactions with your customers that are really authentic will become much more important in the era of AI and sort of AI generated crap. So, you know, as we wrap everything up here, Joe, because we've talked about a lot, you know, we talked about, you know, how AI can be used in product development, better understanding customer personas, written content, all of those things. but maybe, you know, what's your one biggest kind of takeaway, you know, not asking you to see into the future, but we are talking about how AI is changing the e-commerce landscape. What is your biggest takeaway maybe for consumers, so we can split it up and do a two-part question?

What's your biggest takeaway for the average consumer and your biggest takeaway for someone working in e-commerce about how AI is changing the landscape? Yeah, sure. I think for consumers, like, prepare yourself for a lot of what you used to in terms of when you go online and find products and shop for products, a lot of that process to completely change. I mean, again, brave sort of forecast or brave prediction, but I genuinely think that keywords are going away and you will be interacting with essentially with like AI powered chatbots or shopping like co-pilots. that will be able, they'll guide you through the journey. And so it's going to change a lot from that point of view.

For e-commerce sellers, I think is don't waste time, like start getting and using AI because there is like, the more, the more you delay, the more you sort of miss out. And I think AI can help pretty much any sort of area of an e-commerce business. And so, yeah, get on it. Get on it. I love it. And hey, while you're at it, whether you're in the car, listening at the gym, whatever, wherever you're listening, get on going to Your EverydayAI.com and sign up for the free daily newsletter. We're going to have a lot more information in there from Joe and her company, as well as I think she has a newsletter in there as well.

So if you're an e-commerce expert, we'll be putting that in there. But Joe, thank you so much for spending the time to walk us all through how AI is changing the e-commerce landscape. We appreciate your time. Thanks so much, Jordan. Thank you for having me. All right. Well, hey, we hope that you learned how AI is changing the email or the e-commerce landscape. But in the email, we will be recapping today's conversation with main takeaways.

So make sure to go to your everyday AI.com and make sure you join us every single day for more everyday AI. Thanks, y'all. Meet Firefly AI assistant. Now live in Adobe Firefly, the Allman One Creative AI Studio. Just describe what you want to create in your own words. and the assistant handles the rest, orchestrating multi-step workflows across Adobe Creative Cloud apps,

including Photoshop, Premier Express, and more in one conversational interface. You direct the outcome while the assistant accelerates execution. Stand control with the ability to step in and refine at any time. See it today at firefly.adobie.com. And that's a wrap for today's edition of Everyday AI.

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