New eBay platform using AI to enable image search and internal innovation

Many of the biggest tech companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon have realized the value of creating their own AI platforms for both internal and customer-facing services. Facebook's FBLearner Flow helps the social media site filter out offensive posts, while Uber's Michelangelo gives users time predictions for food deliveries. To keep up with the competition, eBay has unveiled its AI platform, Krylov, which has given the company a wide range of new capabilities from improved language translation services to searching with images. In a blog post, eBay's Sanjeev Katariya, vice president and chief architect of the eBay AI and platforms, and Ashok Ramani, director of product management, computer vision, natural and language processing, discussed the creation of Krylov and how it has changed things both inside eBay and for users of the site. "With computer vision powered by eBay's modern AI platform, the technology helps you find items based on the click of your camera or an image. Users can go onto the eBay app and take a photo of what they are looking for and within milliseconds, the platform surfaces items that match the image," Katariya and Ramani wrote in December.