Amazon’s Seller Assistant workflows. Image: Amazon
Amazon is letting AI agents take over the day-to-day running of sellers’ stores. Independent sellers can now check stock, change prices and update listings by chatting to Anthropic’s Claude or Amazon’s own Quick assistant, and set up AI “workflows” that watch their business around the clock, Amazon announced at its Accelerate event on Wednesday.
Our vision was that they would never have to log into Seller Central.
Mary Beth Westmoreland, Amazon vice president, to GeekWire
What’s new
The update centres on Amazon’s Seller Assistant, which runs on Amazon Bedrock using Amazon’s Nova models and Claude. It gets three big additions:
- A plugin for Claude and Quick. Sellers can connect their Amazon account to Amazon Quick or, in beta, to Claude, and manage their business without opening Seller Central, Amazon’s dashboard for sellers. The plugin can see listings, sales, stock levels and performance data, and takes about 60 seconds to set up with no coding, GeekWire reports.
- Workflows that run 24/7. Sellers can give the assistant standing instructions. Amazon’s examples: “Alert me if any of my top 10 products drop below a 4-star rating and draft a response plan,” or “Monitor my top category for competitive openings. If you see one, adjust my pricing and refresh the listings.”
- Memory and “canvas.” The assistant now remembers each seller’s pricing strategy, stock cycles and goals across Seller Central, Quick and Claude. A new canvas view lets sellers compare pricing strategies or work out why an ad campaign isn’t working, using live data.
Who can use it, and what it costs
The plugin is in beta for sellers in Amazon’s US store, with more countries and more AI tools planned. The seller agent is free and optional, Reuters reported. Amazon is also giving every primary seller account 12 months of its Quick Plus subscription for free, plus free access for two co-workers, if they sign up by December 31, 2026.
Is it safe to hand your store to an AI?
Amazon says sellers have to approve actions before the AI carries them out, set their own limits on what it can do, and get a full record of everything it does. Sellers can also choose how much of their data they share, and Amazon says that data stays within its own systems.
Still, it’s a big step. An agent that can change prices and listings on its own could cost sellers money if it gets things wrong, so the approval settings will matter.
Why it matters
Amazon says around 90% of its sellers already use outside AI tools to run parts of their business, often by copying data out of Seller Central by hand. Independent sellers account for more than 60% of units sold on Amazon, and seller fees brought Amazon $46.8 billion in the second quarter, GeekWire notes. Building AI straight into the tools keeps those sellers inside Amazon’s world.
It’s also a win for Anthropic, which Amazon has invested billions in, and another sign of the agent race that has Amazon on both sides: this month it blocked Meta’s Muse agent from shopping on its site, while opening its seller tools to Claude.
