eBay this week announced a new feature coming to its iOS and Android apps, which will give customers the ability to discover more items by dragging and dropping images while they're shopping. This drag-and-drop feature is one of the latest additions to eBay's AI-powered initiative, beginning with last year's "Image Search."

Instead of searching using images of items in the real world, like Image Search, the new feature surfaces results based on existing digital images found in eBay. The feature works by first requiring customers to begin a normal search on eBay, and the company gives the example of searching for a purse. When you see an image of a purse you like, you can search for more listings that include products visually similar to it by dragging and dropping the image of the purse into the search bar.

ebay visual feature
This populates a new search of visually similar results for you to browse, and the company says it should make it easier to find the items you're looking for. eBay's last few iOS updates have been focused on this idea of streamlining the shopping experience and making it easier for customers to sort through the vast amount of items being sold, including a recent Apple Music-inspired "Interests" feature.

Our new visual shopping feature is powered by artificial intelligence. We use deep learning networks known as convolutional neural networks to process your images. Behind the scenes, when you submit your image in the search field, the neural network converts your image into a vector representation. Then, the vector representation of the image that you submit is compared against more than 1.1 billion live listings in eBay’s marketplace, using nearest neighbor search. Finally, we surface the best-matched items, ranked by visual similarity.

The company also just announced this week that it will begin accepting Apple Pay as a payment method later this year. The addition of Apple Pay will hit as eBay undergoes a major payments overhaul beginning in the second half of 2018, kicking off a "small scale" expansion of new payments company Adyen as its primary partner for global payments processing. Adyen will eventually replace PayPal in this role by 2021.

eBay's new visual shopping feature will be available on iOS and Android this August in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia.

Tag: eBay

Top Rated Comments

KPandian1 Avatar
67 months ago
Impressive, groundbreaking, revolutionary feature developed exclusively for our shopping pleasure!
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Popular Stories

iOS 17 and iPhones Feature

iOS 17: 10 New Features That Just Launched

Sunday September 17, 2023 12:35 pm PDT by
In June, Apple announced iOS 17 with a wide range of new features and changes for the iPhone. Following over three months of beta testing, the free software update will be released this Monday, September 18 for the iPhone XS and newer. Below, we have recapped 10 key features coming to the iPhone with iOS 17, with additional features coming later this year. The update should be released to...
iPhone 15 Pro Lineup Feature

iPhone 15 Models Feature New Setting to Strictly Prevent Charging Beyond 80%

Tuesday September 19, 2023 2:04 pm PDT by
All of the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro models feature a new battery health setting that prevents the devices from charging beyond 80% at all times when enabled, as confirmed by The Verge's Allison Johnson during a Q&A session today. The new setting is separate from the pre-existing Optimized Battery Charging feature on iPhones, which intelligently delays charging past 80% until a more...
maxresdefault

Apple Releases iOS 17 With StandBy, Live Voicemail, Improved Autocorrect, FaceTime Video Messages and Tons More

Monday September 18, 2023 10:05 am PDT by
Apple today released iOS 17 and iPadOS 17, the latest operating system updates that are designed for the iPhone and iPad. As with all of Apple's software updates, iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 are available for free. iOS 17 is compatible with the iPhone XR/iPhone XS and later, while iPadOS 17 runs on the iPad mini 5 and later, the iPad 6 and later, iPad Air 3 and later, the second-generation 12.9-inch...
flighty standby

Best Apps With New iOS 17 and watchOS 10 Features

Monday September 18, 2023 3:02 pm PDT by
With the release of a new operating system, there are multiple features and design elements for developers to adopt. Now that iOS 17 is out, many major apps are getting interesting updates today, which we've rounded up below. watchOS 10 also has a new design language, so there are a range of Apple Watch updates to check out too. Flighty (Free, Premium Subscription) Popular flight tracking...