Amazon.com introduced an artificial intelligence agent on Wednesday designed to assist third-party merchants in operating their online businesses.

The company announced it is adding agent functionality to Seller Assistant, its AI tool for third-party sellers, enabling the software to take actions on behalf of merchants with their permission. Amazon.com made this announcement at its annual seller acceleration conference held in Seattle.

According to Amazon.com, tools like Seller Assistant allow merchants to "spend more time focusing on product innovation and customer relationships," while its generative AI tools handle more tedious operational tasks.

Amazon.com has already released several AI tools for third-party sellers, including product listing generators and advertising image and video generators. These third-party sellers account for more than half of all items sold on the platform.

Dharmesh Mehta, Vice President of Global Selling Partner Services at Amazon.com, said in an interview this week that 1.3 million third-party sellers have used Amazon.com's generative AI listing tools, which generate 70% of product listing content on Amazon.com's marketplace.

"In a sense, this really gives sellers a team of experts," Mehta said. "An expert in listing, pricing, promotions, and supply chain - all the things that a small business would typically have to try to learn themselves, hire experts, pay experts, or sometimes just accept being not very good at, which is not ideal."

The company stated that its enhanced Seller Assistant can not only answer questions but also coordinate inventory orders and business growth plans, and resolve account issues, potentially helping merchants avoid costly service suspensions.

The company added that over time, Amazon.com hopes to add more agent functionalities based on seller feedback.

Generative AI has evolved from image and text generators to agent AI tools that can complete multi-step tasks for users with minimal supervision. Beyond third-party marketplaces, Amazon.com's AI lab in San Francisco released a preview of an agent capable of taking actions within web browsers in March this year.

Seller Assistant utilizes Bedrock software tools, through which users can access large language models from Amazon.com as well as companies like Anthropic and OpenAI.

Mehta said the company currently has no plans to charge merchants for using Seller Assistant.

Sellers pay Amazon.com for access to its internal fulfillment services, account management services, and other offerings. This has become a substantial business for the company, generating $40.3 billion in revenue in the second quarter.

Last September, Amazon.com launched its first-generation AI assistant for sellers, then codenamed "Project Amelia," which allowed merchants to resolve account issues, receive inventory planning advice, brainstorm product names, and perform other tasks.