Amazon’s Catalog AI Enhances Your Shopping Experience
If you have shopped on Amazon recently, you may have noticed it is now easier to find exactly what you want. Product listings feature more images, detailed titles, and clearer descriptions. Additionally, the website’s predictive search suggests relevant items in real time as you type in the search bar. This improved shopping experience is powered by Amazon’s Catalog AI system, developed under the leadership of Abhishek Agrawal.
Launched in July, Catalog AI gathers product information from across the Internet about items sold on Amazon. Using this data, it updates listings to make them more detailed and better organized. This helps customers find products more quickly and with greater confidence. The system also supports third-party sellers by standardizing product descriptions, ensuring consistency across the platform.
About Abhishek Agrawal and His Journey in AI
Abhishek Agrawal is an engineering leader at Amazon Web Services in Seattle. He is an expert in artificial intelligence and machine learning and holds the status of IEEE senior member. Before joining Amazon, Agrawal worked at Microsoft, where he contributed to the Bing search engine and Microsoft Teams messaging platform.
Agrawal has over 20 years of experience in AI. He began his career in India after earning degrees in statistics and computer science from the University of Allahabad and the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata. His interest in AI was sparked during his studies when he encountered machine learning applications in medical imaging.
Starting as a senior software engineer at Novell, Agrawal helped develop iFolder, a file storage platform. He later joined Microsoft, where he worked on upgrading software and improving search technologies. At Microsoft, he played a key role in enhancing Bing’s search results and developing an online A/B testing platform to evaluate new features before launch. This platform was later adapted for use across Microsoft products, improving the deployment of updates.
At Microsoft Teams, Agrawal led efforts to improve user experience by introducing machine learning features such as Trending, which prioritized important messages for users. He also helped launch emoji reactions, screen sharing, and video calls. In 2020, he left Microsoft to join Amazon as an engineering leader.
How Amazon’s Catalog AI Transforms Product Listings
At Amazon, Agrawal led a team that initially gathered product details manually to create a glossary of standardized terms. This glossary included attributes like product dimensions, colors, and manufacturers. The goal was to make product descriptions more consistent, especially for third-party sellers who previously entered varying amounts of information.
To streamline this process, Agrawal developed a system that suggests glossary terms to sellers as they type their product descriptions. He also created an AI algorithm that uses this glossary to refine search results based on user queries. For example, when a customer types “red mixer,” the algorithm suggests matching products instantly.
As Amazon’s product catalog grew too large for manual updates, Agrawal’s team built an AI tool to automate the process. This tool became the foundation of Amazon’s Catalog AI system. It collects product information from across the web and uses large language models to update listings by filling in missing details, correcting errors, and rewriting titles and specifications for clarity.
According to a July report by Fox News, Amazon expects this AI tool to boost sales by $7.5 billion this year. The system not only improves the shopping experience but also helps sellers present their products more effectively.
Agrawal’s Role in IEEE and Ongoing Contributions
Since joining IEEE in December, Agrawal has become an active volunteer and was elevated to senior member. He serves as social media chair of the IEEE Seattle Section and vice chair of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society. He also cochaired workshops at the IEEE New Era AI World Leaders Summit held in December in Seattle. This event gathered leaders from government, industry, and research to discuss AI applications in cybersecurity, healthcare, and disaster response.
Agrawal stays current with technological advances by peer-reviewing 15 IEEE journals. He values IEEE’s rigorous review process, which ensures the authenticity and quality of published research. Being part of IEEE has helped him grow both technically and as a leader, supporting his ongoing career development.
Through his work at Amazon and his involvement with IEEE, Abhishek Agrawal continues to push the boundaries of AI technology, making online shopping smarter and more efficient for millions of users worldwide. Amazon’s Catalog AI is a prime example of how advanced AI systems can transform everyday experiences by making product information clearer and more accessible.
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Source: original article.