Effective Use of AI for E-Commerce Companies

Practical playbook for e-commerce brands leveraging AI to accelerate catalogue management and search presence.

Speakers: Yiğit Konur

18 Oct 2023

Video Transcript

⏱ 20 min read• 3,582 words

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— Hey everyone. This is the final presentation. It’s a bit softer with more video. I’m here to drag you into my pessimistic, unhappy world of AI. There’s audio coming up. It might blast out. I’m warning you now to avoid a heart attack. We haven’t tested the sound yet. Yeah, okay.

— What’s up, Zeo event?

— Alright. We used to have speech-to-text. Now, with AI, it’s everywhere. Not just in text. That’s not my main point. The future is arriving incredibly fast. We’ve been hearing this woman’s voice everywhere for a while. But there’s a new text-to-speech model that dropped this week. You probably haven’t seen it. It’s for Turkish, too. I was blown away.

— Welcome to the Zeo event. Today, we’ll use AI to hear your voice and tone. Or maybe not. Can you hear me out there?

— It has a few different voice tones.

— Welcome to the Zeo event.

— This is actually AI. It’s not me. Don’t get it wrong. That would be pretty funny.

— And how it impacts our daily lives.

— It includes, uh, laughing and throat clearing.

— Zeo is here. Great. Welcome to the Zeo event. How can we grow in commerce using AI?

— This is wild. Honestly, it really caught me off guard. Things are getting strange. We used to be able to tell human voices from machines. It was a simpler time. Now, we’re losing that reality. Everyone’s heard of deepfakes. They’ve been messing with our perception of reality for a while now. To make things even bleaker, let me show you Adept. I really respect this company. They just raised 300 million dollars. Let’s restart the video. I’m saying, "Find me a house in Houston."

Look at the left side. Let’s start over. Just watch the left screen. I’m typing a prompt. It’s a website. Adept works across all websites. I’m searching for a home for a family of four in Houston under 600k. I just say it. I can use voice or text. It’s currently in closed alpha. As you can see, it filtered for 4+ bedrooms. It’s showing me homes under 600k. This company is dangerous. We all know what GPT does by now. If you aren't using it, you’re probably in the wrong industry. It’s incredible. I see this as AI coming to life.

AI used to be a tool inside GPT. Things have changed. I can actively offload parts of my job to this. People might stop hiring us and just use this instead. It’s a total game changer. Maybe people using Zeo will start outsourcing tasks to these tools. Or maybe you're an analyst or a data pro. You think you're safe. But look at what happens. "Make a profit margin column and a profit column." Okay. It looked at the data. It created both columns. It understood the context. It nailed the request.

The future is arriving faster than we thought. The car is moving downhill with no brakes. It’s accelerating every day. Honestly, I think many of us are ignoring these updates out of fear. Is anyone else here willing to admit that? We’ve stopped tracking AI developments. I realized I was muting these topics on Twitter. I told myself: "Yiğit, this is bad. You need to understand this." You have to integrate this into your life. Otherwise, it will integrate you into its future. And that won't end well for me. We already know what GPT-4 can do with text.

We’ve seen voice tech. Now we have models that turn text into voice. It’s evolving daily. You can say: "Draw a guy in a car, make it Lego. Have him turn his head.". This could go in wild directions. I was crushed when "How I Met Your Mother" ended. Imagine a GPT-4 model writing new episodes. We could watch the same cast again. But what about the copyright? That’s still a massive gray area. We could watch these episodes on loop. It’s fundamentally changing the entertainment industry. Remember when AI first hit? Everyone said artists were safe. Designers felt untouchable.

They claimed machines couldn't replicate human creativity. Well, they’re at risk now too. Some truly bizarre things are happening globally. There’s one app I find pretty twisted. I struggled to even find a decent video about it. It’s called "Replika." It’s GPT-based. You get a virtual girlfriend to chat with forever. If you’re falling for that, God help you. It’s a slippery slope. I actually tried it myself. I deleted it immediately. I’m married, so that’s a tough one to explain. It’s dangerous because the dialogue is so convincing. It really reminds me of the movie "Her." You should watch it if you haven't.

It’s a great film. A guy falls in love with an AI. Things get weird when the AI inhabits a body. There are some strange projects out there. Ever wonder what your hypothetical kid would look like? Check out a site called ourbabyai.com. Upload photos of you and your partner. Or maybe your ex. See what you missed out on. Or what you dodged. It’s all happening. There’s no turning back now. Elon Musk and others asked to pause AI development for six months. OpenAI didn't really care. Should we pause? Let's discuss that in the Q&A. Serkan bailed on us today. So we have plenty of time. We can dive into the ethics.

Regardless, we must master this. We have to integrate it into our lives. Don't just use what's given. Understand AI's capacity. Integrate it into your workflow. I bend over backwards to use AI for every boring task. It’s my favorite hobby. I’ll spend 12 hours automating a 2-hour job. I love it. I’d rather tinker with Zapier, Make.com, or GPT-4 than suffer through manual work. I prepped your VOOP demo accounts that way too. Finding every competitor manually was a pain. I hang out on replicate.com constantly. It handles those hyper-realistic AI voices I showed you.

New models always drop on Replicate first. Keep a close eye on this site. You might find a new business opportunity. Or a way to integrate AI into your workflow. The interface is incredibly simple. There are tons of options here. I know you can't see the screen. Let me read a few. Want to colorize your grandma's old black-and-white photos with AI? Or fix the lighting in a great photo of yourself? It handles heavy GPU and AI tasks. It costs just $0.0004 per second. It’s a fantastic platform for renting GPU power.

That’s why using Replicate matters. Here is how I use it personally. I really love this. Mirza MİL and I did this two weeks ago. We were in a meeting. Meetings are the worst part of business. At least for me, they are. They aren't usually very productive either. I’ve started recording all my meetings. If you ever meet with me, keep that in mind. I’m definitely recording. I even found a way to record without showing a notification. I’ll tell you how once the cameras are off. Mirza MİL gave me permission. This isn't a leak. We’re just discussing a new feature.

We recorded this meeting. Then I used Replicate to transcribe it. The output is clean and perfect. OpenAI Whisper is incredible. Apple’s dictation is trash. It can’t handle our corporate jargon. We mix English and Turkish constantly. It just gets confused. This gets everything right. I spend five minutes editing it. I just fix a few words. Then I say, "Look. This is our meeting transcript." I don't even need to copy-paste some complex prompt. Anyone with common sense can write a decent prompt. I say, "We had a meeting. The ideas are scattered. I need a backend doc for the developers. Read the text below."

"Understand the content and draft a backend doc based on our discussion." I link it to our new Content AI module in VOOP. It’s a killer feature. You get three months free with the demo accounts. It suggests specific topics. Mirza and I discussed all of this. We opened the design in Figma. We explained it, but AI can't see images. It only hears audio. I transcribed that audio and fed it to the tool. The resulting doc was top-tier. Even our developers loved it.

They found it high quality. Honestly, I could write this doc. But I really don't want to. I prefer chatting with Mirza MİL about it. I love being a PM. But I hate writing product docs. Thank God we’re past that. The final output is solid. Let me show you. It’s perfect. I didn't write a single word. I just explained the task. The doc just appeared. It gets even better. We handed it to the team to code. The endpoints, inputs, and outputs are clear. It can even write the Python code for you. My chat with Mirza MİL turned into actual code.

A working product. It’s incredible. People aren't excited enough. That actually bugs me. Sometimes I think, let them stay calm. But we should be hyped. This is a massive deal. It’s huge. Bigger than the invention of the internet. We need to integrate this more. Burak showed great Excel hacks today. Gpt4work.com is a great plugin. It’s easy to install. I asked it for a meta description. I added an A5 prompt. I dragged it down. I got tons of unique meta descriptions. Check out learnprompting.org to level up.

It shows you how to write better prompts. You see those Instagram ads selling 500 prompts for $3? Don't buy that junk. Learn the logic behind it instead. I don't know if this applies in Turkey yet. But this is god-like power. It’s almost disturbingly god-like. I’m using that as a metaphor. I’m heading abroad in five days. I don't want any trouble. I’ll be at the airport. Let’s cut this part out. Metaphorically speaking, this is god-like. It’s like having a god that does whatever you ask. It’s honestly terrifying. It’s incredible.

You need to integrate this into everything. Get it out of the ChatGPT screen. Use it in your reports and daily tasks. That’s how it becomes part of your workflow. That was the first example. Here is the second. I have some product names here from Hepsiburada. I typed in phone case. And this one is a hairbrush, I think. I use GPT fill. I select my examples. I highlight this range. Then I tell it: this is a phone case, this is a hairbrush. So, what is this?

It analyzes the data. It identifies it as a smartphone. Boom, it writes it out. You add a dollar sign to lock the formula. That part isn't critical. I drag it down. Now I have a tool that categorizes my product names. If a task bores you, there’s an AI ile way to do it. Think about it or just ask AI how. It’ll guide you. It’s a great plugin. Check out GPT4work. It’s packed with features. Use GPT edit to clean up text. It handles data extraction and more. I won’t list everything here. Definitely install it in your Google Sheets. Integrate it into your daily workflow.

Microsoft launched Copilot for Office. But it’s only for enterprises right now. You can ask your Excel sheets questions. Don't wait for that to roll out. Look, I put it right here. What a lucky break. Oh, that was me. I thought it was the projector text. It’s getluminal.com. You can use it with Google Sheets. Have some data? Maybe an export from your rank tracker? Use VOOP to export at light speed. Upload it and chat with your table. It’s a social experience. Ask questions and extract insights. You can even visualize the data. It’s brilliant. As you integrate this into your workflow, everything changes.

I believe this will happen soon. In 2 or 3 years, companies will ask this in interviews. I know I would. I’d give them a challenge and say. "Share your screen." How would you solve this with AI? It’s like our live coding sessions for developers. I want to trademark a brand. How would you fill those out? If they use GPT fill commands to solve it instantly, that’s amazing. This person can solve my other problems too. You don't even need to know how to do things anymore. That requirement is gone.

Just ask how to do it. Or tell it to write the code. It does it. It can do anything you want. I think that’s terrifyingly good. The only missing piece? Collecting data. Great AI tools are coming out for that. Kadoa is one of them. You just log in. Let me restart this video. Kadoa does this. Say I want a competitor's prices and product names. I tell it to update from Hepsiburada.com every hour. Go get all of that for me. Kadoa.com scrapes those pages for me directly.

It grabs price data for every product. It prepares it in CSV or Excel format. This is perfect. You can pull external data and analyze competitor pricing. You can even ask your AI tables questions about it. This is a brand new way of working. It’s really fun. It’s something totally new. We should toss out everything we learned and work this way. I’m 32. I have plenty of work experience. But I’m starting over and doing everything from scratch. Using AI. That’s one of the best parts. Communicating with dev and design teams. You explain things, but they don't get it. Or the result isn't what you wanted. Our designer is lovely and very understanding. But why not explain our work better to them?

Galileo is a great AI product. Just upload your design concept. Need a buying guide for your product pages? Just type it in. It generates the page instantly. It works for both mobile and desktop. That’s a killer feature. Having visual proof of your idea speeds things up. The biggest problem in business is people can’t explain what they want. That’s a huge issue. Ambiguity kills tasks. We always procrastinate on vague tasks. Don't do that to others. Help your team out. Make your designer happy. This isn't your only option.

Uizard is another great tool. It’s similar. It even gives you editable files for Figma. Need a vegan pet food delivery app? Bam. It creates it instantly. It’s perfect for sharing ideas with your team. E-commerce experiences will change drastically. People are getting used to writing prompts. I doubt they'll keep clicking through menus. This site looks basic, but the experience is solid. It’s getproduct.help. I type in that I’m buying a laptop. It asks for my budget. I ignore that and ask for a big screen. It finds 16-inch models. Like that laptop Kivanc Tatlitug used.

It’s an old photo. Pretty funny. Check it out. It shows a laptop like that. Then he asks, "Yiğit, what processor should I get?" I say. "At least an i9." The filters keep narrowing down. The conversational flow is great. Typing might feel like a chore today. Soon, it’ll all be voice-based. Actually, it’s already here. They just haven't implemented it yet. Speech-to-text tech has advanced massively. It’s gotten like 100 times faster. I don't write my own emails anymore. I use Whisper for everything. I even use keyboard shortcuts on Discord to send text via voice. Not voice notes. Actual text. Or take the travel industry. New sites are popping up.

People say, "I have 3 days in Paris. $500 budget. I hate museums." That’s exactly me. It promises a museum-free Paris trip. Anyone who’s been to Paris knows that’s tough. It’s perfect. It builds the plan instantly. If you’re a travel agency, offering this is huge. Letting users book directly through your site is a game changer. I think agencies for this niche should exist. Brands love agencies. We love brands. We can definitely push these solutions forward. It’s a massive opportunity. Surprisingly, most people still don't know how to build this.

Most developers don't care about AI. They’re scared, so they ignore it. I’ve been there, so I get it. You can learn this yourself. You can write your own code. You can finally finish those side projects. I built the V2 of the AI grouping feature in VOOP. As a CS freshman, AI made my childhood dream come true. I wrote a key feature for our product. It’s amazing. I’m not even a great Python coder. I just read it and get the gist. Like anyone else. You can do so much. Think about your e-commerce reviews.

There are great tools to cluster them and get insights. Use them. Or use them to reply to comments properly. You know those annoying Twitter replies? "Thanks for sharing your complaint." "We will call your mobile." Those messages just make angry people angrier. AI lets you handle that much better. Whatever message you get, I’ll show you in the video. This platform replies in your brand’s voice. It also pulls in all your messages. It consolidates everything into one place. There is so much you can do on YouTube.

Take YouTube Shorts. It’s been around for a year. It’s YouTube’s answer to Instagram. But you have tons of landscape videos. Converting them to vertical is a pain. Who has time for that? This app finds the best parts of your videos. It checks your YouTube analytics. It clips the highlights to fit Shorts limits. It generates Shorts for you. I think that’s super. Normally, you’d brief a videographer. The result never matches your vision. Let AI mess it up instead. At least you can fix it yourself. You’re in control. Or maybe you need a thumbnail.

That was a bad example, like a cheesy thumbnail. Forget I said that. You upload your own assets. It creates a YouTube thumbnail for you. That’s also perfect. It produces interesting, high-quality thumbnails. There is so much you can do. Think of it like this. People rent or sell homes fully furnished. I saw that on TLC all the time. The coolest thing I saw was this. You can actually furnish an empty room now. Did I trigger that? My hand slipped. It was perfectly synced. It can place furniture into an empty room.

Imagine if sahibinden.com did this. It would be amazing. I don't know how they'd handle those low-quality realtor photos. But for high-quality shots? Even if they don't, a competitor should. Zingat or Hürriyet Emlak could do it. They could digitally stage empty homes. It makes the space look so much better. Realtors should be doing this anyway. It would give them some real value. It’s a great example. Generating ads directly from product catalogs is also huge. Say you have 100,000 products. Creating unique creatives for each one is impossible.

These platforms can isolate the background. They create the perfect composition for your product. Some tools even let you design based on your brand assets. You just input your brand colors. Then it generates everything to match your style. A Turkish company called Vidyu used to do this. Their video version was impressive. I’m really hyped about this. Trendyol could definitely pull this off soon. It’s a brilliant project. You take a photo of a dress and put it on a model. Think about it. How will this dress look on someone my size? Right now, you have to buy ten, hate eight, and return them. I learned that from my sister. It’s a great hack. But it’s bad for the planet, right Ezgi?

It’s a real issue. We don't want that. These tools let us create different body types. We can analyze how clothes fit on anyone. You can even customize the AI yourself. Imagine using AI with your own 3D body model. Combine these two products. Scan your body shape. Try on clothes from Trendyol virtually. See yourself in every single item in the listing. That sounds terrifying. I just thought about it. It’s actually pretty scary. But we’ll get used to it. It won't be a problem. People are doing wild things. One guy created a psycho AI woman with an Instagram account.

She posts constantly. One day she’s an astronaut. Next, a tailor. She rides horses, dances ballet, hits the beach. It shows how far this tech has come. It’s incredible. You can generate infinite content. This is another cool area. We’re nearing the end. I really like this product. Say you’re working on mechanical keyboards. It instantly builds a mind map for you. Bam, bam, bam. Give this to a content writer. Tell them to cover these points. If they’re already using AI, a mind map might feel redundant. Still, it provides a solid flow. It helps you stay in control.

Maybe you’ve heard of Midjourney. There are AIs that generate images too. Beyond Chat GPT, you describe a picture to them. People are bad at describing things. That’s natural. I can’t do it either. I have two designer friends using Leonardo. One writes a prompt. They get a model-tier result. I write one. I get something totally different. It creates incredible prompts for you. You can even pick visual styles to match. If your design eye is weak like mine, this is perfect. You can grab these prompts directly from the site. That’s it for my presentation.

I didn't add a thank you slide. I wanted to thank you all personally for coming.

This transcript was generated using AI speech recognition and verified against subtitle style rules.

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