eBay Brings New Image Search Feature to its Smartphone Apps

In an effort to make it easier for users to find what they are looking for, eBay has today announced the launch of its new visual shopping feature that lets users perform a quick search by dragging and dropping images into the search bar on eBay’s iOS and Android apps. 

eBay debuted Image Search last year with the help of computer vision but now, it is making the process only a swipe of your finger away. The feature is powered by artificial intelligence and uses deep learning networks known as “convolutional neural networks” to process the images. 

So for instance, if you search for a new chair by typing “egg chair” into the search bar and see a list of results for your search, simply drag the image of the one chair that stands out to the search bar and you’ll instantly get visually similar results.

As we continue to make the entire internet shoppable using computer vision, we’re evolving the search experience on eBay to help you more easily find what you want. Starting in August, our new visual shopping feature allows you to drag an image to the search bar to find more items that look like the image that you love.

As we improve the experience, we are heavily focused on continuing to enhance its quality and integrate more into eBay’s shopping experience. 

The visual shopping feature will be available starting in August on iOS and Android for the U.S., U.K., Germany, and Australia.