Has anyone played around with using ChatGPT to make listing descriptions

[bajasierra]

Since ChatGPT has been "the talk of the town" recently, I am wondering if anyone has tried to use it to create ad copy for product listings?   I already have a decent size inventory but I have found my "bottleneck" is the time it takes to photo my items and write up this text description, that hopefully is at least somewhat persuasive.   

I've dabbled in trying this - and it has worked a little, but some of the things it writes are, frankly, over the top.   For example, I asked it to write a watch description with some basic information, and it said something like, "the band on this watch is fantastic - you can wear it all day without the slightest discomfort".    That is a bit too "over-hyped" for my tastes, even worse when you consider the thing that wrote it wasn't even human!

I think this could get better with some training and standard templates, but I haven't had much time to explore this further.   What do you guys think?  Is this the future?  I mean, wouldn't it be cool if you could just give it a picture and have it do all the work.   It might as well buy the items I sell also, and while it is at it, it would be nice if it would clean my apartment so I can just goof around all day, which is what I really want to do.   What do you guys think?  Will this technology change the way we sell?

[stainlessenginecovers]

Ebay listing is not built for that.

No to mention my personal take:

...Never heard of it. Sounds beyond lame. 

Write your own descriptions.

Take your own pictures. 

[bajasierra]

lol - you've "never heard of it" but it sounds, "beyond lame".   I hope you don't take offense, but you are definitely not the kind of person I would take technology advice from. 

[toomuchstuffagain35]

I'm sure eventually there will be an app that you can use to just take a picture of an object and it will let you know if it's it's worth buying for resale or not, based on 'almost instant' research drawn from the net on current pricing and sales etc.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@bajasierra 

On one of the Facebook ebay Groups I belong to (don't remember which one) someone said it has already been a game changer for him...he just tweeks the description and that's that. I haven't played around with it....my descriptions are usually fairly short ....and don't usually take long to write. 

But yes, this has enormous potential. If this thing can pass tests at the Wharton Business School, it can probably write some decent ebay descriptions...if not today, then tomorrow LOL

I'm probably too much of a Luddite to fully embrace it, but I probably will eventually play around with it.

[toomuchstuffagain35]

Considering how often we hear that buyers don't read descriptions you wonder if it's worth using or not.

It might be worthwhile if you usually sell OOAK items that need a more lengthy description and you have writer's block.

[ten_o_nine]

@bajasierra 

It's like any other technology at the start, look at eBay 1995 and eBay now, I never used it, tried in the past to log in and register but says servers are down, and to provide an email to let me know when servers are up, but definitely would like to play with it and see what it can do.

[bajasierra]

They do sometimes have downtime with their servers, but they gained more users more quickly than any other site in history, so that is somewhat understandable.  I would definitely try again - even if you decide to not use it, everyone needs to understand it. 

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

This guy has a bit of an accent, but here's a really quick look at using it for ebay:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEJ0jYXFygw

[bajasierra]

It is a strange technology.   One of the first things students noticed is that they could use it to write school papers - and even specify the grade level of writing.   At first, teachers were taken aback, but then one of them realized, "Hey, we could use this to grade student papers".   The point is, no one really knows the impact this will have on society, but yes, it can absolutely write product descriptions. 

[bajasierra]

Thanks - but he already had product descriptions and used ChatGPT to "embellish" them.   Even that is impressive but I don't have that for the watches and knives I am selling.   I think it will work if I come up with a good template of features, even if it is incomplete. 

p.s.  I don't mind accents - in fact, I rather like them. 

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@bajasierra  I don't mind accents either, but I have found some people have trouble understanding what is being said...so I like to give fair warning when I post something like this.

And yes, in this case, he is providing more input than you might wish, but even that seems to be mostly copy and paste (he is lifting it from the product catalog---his company is basically geared towards drop shippers). 

I sell a large variety of stuff, much of it old and with no catalog to pull from. I suspect the amount of info I would have to input for most of my items would reduce the time saved....but again, when I have some spare time, I might give it a try. It will likely improve as time goes on.

As far as photos go, there are already photobooth type tools that have multiple cameras, automated lighting etc....which I'm sure can save a lot of time when it comes to product photography, but I'd guess for someone like me, selling mostly one-offs, it is cost prohibitive. 

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

Just one example of automated product photography...and this is a few years old I believe:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dg4G6APbSM

[bajasierra]

I think that is an important point.  We know it works - people are already doing it, but does creating the input for ChatGPT take as much time, or even more than it takes just to write the listing yourself? 

[slippinjimmy]

Although I have not as yet used ChatGPT (for anything) I have been following it's development for a few months.

It's very interesting technology that is in it's very early stages of development.

One BIG warning from the examples I've seen, it's definitely GIGO (garbage in / garbage out), the data you input needs to be clear and concise for the output to be of use (although you can always use the output as a BASIS for the final product).