Not sure how to describe what you’re looking for? eBay is making it as simple as snapping a picture.

Starting today, our new image-recognition features are live on eBay’s mobile apps -- Find It On eBay and Image Search. These features allow shoppers to use pictures instead of words to search eBay’s 1.1 billion listings, spanning the new and truly unique. Enabled by artificial intelligence and machine learning, these innovative ways to shop will help you quickly find the things you love, making the entire internet shoppable on your mobile device.

Using AI to Transform the Way People Are Shopping

With Find It On eBay, you can start your search on any social platform, like Facebook, or while browsing your favorite blog or website. Simply “Share” the image with eBay and the eBay mobile app will surface similar listings.

With Image Search, you just click on the camera button and take a photo or use an existing photo of the item you want to buy from your camera roll. eBay will then show you listings for items that are a close match or visually similar to what you want to buy.

Leveraging the latest advances in two core parts of artificial intelligence -- computer vision and deep learning -- these new features make it easier to find and buy the things that inspire you. When you upload images to run Find It On eBay and Image Search, we use a deep learning model called a convolutional neural network to process the images. The output of the model gives us a representation of your image that we can use to compare to the images of the live listings on eBay. Then, we rank the items based on visual similarity and use our open-source Kubernetes platform to quickly bring these results to you, wherever you are in the world.

Find It On eBay and Image Search are only the beginning. As shoppers continue to search with pictures (instead of words), Find It On eBay and Image Search will get smarter, learn, and improve on the results that are surfaced.

These features are just some of the ways eBay is transforming the shopping experience. Over the past year, eBay has also leveraged image recognition technology to help consumers easily find what they’re looking for when using eBay ShopBot for Facebook Messenger; and, when shopping for fashion items eBay’s Shop the Look helps buyers easily browse for items that make up iconic fashion looks.

Find It On eBay is now live on Android. Image Search is now live on Android and iOS.