Project Amelia is the codename Amazon used in September 2024 for a generative-AI assistant built into Seller Central, and Amazon’s own current pages now call the same tool Seller Assistant — the name changed in Amazon’s usage without a public “we renamed it” statement. It answers plain-language questions about a seller’s account using Amazon Bedrock, and since a September 2025 upgrade it can also take agentic actions — inventory reordering, compliance fixes, ad and listing generation — with a seller’s permission. It does not set prices, negotiate with Amazon on a seller’s behalf, or work outside the U.S. store for most sellers yet. This guide traces what Amazon has published about it, in order, so “Amelia,” “Seller Assistant,” and the newer “Canvas” feature stop getting used as if they were three different products (all facts checked against aboutamazon.com on 2026-09-18).
What Amazon Has Actually Confirmed
Three official Amazon posts anchor this guide, and the dates matter because the product changed shape twice.
1. The September 2024 launch. Amazon’s original announcement, “Amazon launches a powerful new generative AI-based selling assistant codenamed Project Amelia” (aboutamazon.com, byline Mary Beth Westmoreland, VP Worldwide Selling Partner Experience), describes an assistant “built using Amazon Bedrock, which provides scalable access to the latest foundation models and AI tools,” combining “broad world knowledge” with “deep expertise and specialized knowledge of selling on Amazon.” Trade press dated the announcement to Amazon’s Accelerate event; TechCrunch and GeekWire both published same-day coverage on 2024-09-19. At launch, Amazon described the rollout as beta, limited to “an initial set of U.S. sellers,” in English only, with other countries and languages planned “later this year.”
2. The September 2025 agentic upgrade. A separate aboutamazon.com post, “Amazon unveils new agentic AI-powered Seller Assistant to help independent sellers grow,” opens with: “Last year, we introduced Seller Assistant, a generative AI—powered expert for sellers, that provided immediate answers to questions and guided sellers to helpful resources. Today, I’m excited to announce the next evolution of Seller Assistant, enhanced with agentic AI capabilities—an important step forward that allows AI to not just respond, but to reason, plan, and help take action with a seller’s permission.” That sentence is doing two things at once: it confirms the 2024 tool is the same product being discussed, and it uses “Seller Assistant” as the name without ever writing the word “Amelia.” Amazon reported the upgraded tool available to all U.S. sellers at no additional cost, with other countries “in the coming months.” CNBC covered the same announcement on 2025-09-17.
3. Adoption numbers Amazon has published. A later aboutamazon.com post — the 2025 Small Business Empowerment Report — states: “In 2025, Seller Assistant, an always-on, agentic AI expert for sellers, had more than 230,000 monthly users, with sellers accepting its recommended actions more than 90% of the time.” That is the most recent official usage figure available as of this check; Amazon has not published a lifetime or cumulative user count for Amelia/Seller Assistant on the pages reviewed.
What It Can Actually Do
Collapsing the 2024 and 2025 announcements into one list of documented capabilities:
| Capability | Documented since | What Amazon says it does |
|---|---|---|
| Knowledge-based Q&A | 2024 launch | Answers seller questions “with summarized information from reliable sources,” available from any Seller Central page |
| Status updates and metrics | 2024 launch | Retrieves sales data, customer traffic, and performance comparisons through conversational queries |
| Inventory and FBA optimization | 2025 agentic upgrade | Analyzes demand and helps coordinate reordering |
| Account health monitoring | 2025 agentic upgrade | Proactively watches for issues and alerts sellers |
| Compliance navigation | 2025 agentic upgrade | Flags potential policy violations and helps resolve them |
| Advertising generation | 2025 agentic upgrade | Produces ad creative via “Creative Studio” and can assemble campaigns |
| Product and strategy recommendations | 2025 agentic upgrade | Analyzes sales patterns to suggest categories, marketing angles, and seasonal playbooks |
| Action-taking (agentic) | 2025 agentic upgrade | “reason, plan, and help take action with a seller’s permission” |
The load-bearing distinction is the word “permission.” Amazon’s own description of the agentic layer is consistent across both posts: the assistant can propose an action, but a seller approves it before anything executes on the account. Amazon’s reported acceptance rate — sellers approving recommended actions more than 90% of the time — is a measure of how often sellers said yes, not evidence that the assistant acts autonomously without a checkpoint.
Amelia vs. Seller Assistant vs. Canvas: Getting the Names Straight
This is the part most third-party coverage glosses over, and it is worth being precise about because Amazon itself has not been.
- “Project Amelia” was the codename attached to the September 2024 beta launch. It was never presented as a permanent product name — “codenamed” is in Amazon’s own headline.
- “Seller Assistant” is what Amazon’s own pages call the tool starting with the September 2025 agentic-upgrade post, and what its current Seller Central help documentation uses. Amazon has not published a sentence stating “Project Amelia is now Seller Assistant”; the continuity is established indirectly, by the 2025 post referring back to “last year” without introducing a new product. Unlike the Rufus-to-Alexa-for-Shopping change (which our Rufus and Alexa for Shopping guide covers, and which came with an explicit editor’s note on Amazon’s own page), there is no equivalent public rename notice for Amelia. Treat “Amelia” and “Seller Assistant” as the same underlying assistant, referred to by two names at two points in its rollout — not as a confirmed, announced rename.
- “Canvas” is a different, newer feature, launched in early March 2026 for U.S. and U.K. sellers. Amazon’s own description: “The canvas works together with Seller Assistant and is built on Seller Assistant’s agentic architecture” — a visual dashboard layer that sits on top of the same AI system, not a replacement for the conversational assistant. If a source you’re reading treats Canvas as “the new name for Amelia,” that source is wrong; Amazon describes them as two features that work together.
What Amazon Hasn’t Published
Being specific about the gaps is what keeps the rest of this guide honest. As of the pages checked on 2026-09-18:
- No pricing effect. Nothing in either official post says the assistant can change a listing’s price or negotiate buy-box terms. It optimizes inventory and flags issues; pricing strategy is not named as a function.
- No full non-U.S. timeline. Both the 2024 and 2025 posts describe the U.S. store rollout in detail and gesture at “other countries” or “coming months” without a published country list or date.
- No public list of every action type. Amazon names categories (inventory, compliance, advertising, strategy) but not an exhaustive catalog of every action the agentic layer can take — comparable to the gap our Amazon Ads MCP Server guide documents for that separate tool’s action inventory.
- No independent audit of the 90% acceptance figure. It is Amazon’s own reported number, not a third-party-verified statistic, and Amazon has not published the underlying sample size or how “recommended action” is defined.
- No stated cost ceiling. Amazon says the tool is available “at no additional cost” today; nothing in either post addresses whether that changes for high-usage sellers as agentic actions scale.
If a seller-tools blog fills in any of these blanks with a specific number, ask which Amazon page it traces to — on the evidence reviewed here, none of them can be.
How Amelia/Seller Assistant Differs From Amazon’s Other AI Tools
Amazon now runs several separately branded AI systems that a seller can easily conflate. They solve different problems:
| Seller Assistant (Amelia) | Amazon Ads MCP Server | Rufus / Alexa for Shopping | Amazon COSMO | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who uses it | Sellers, inside Seller Central | Developers/agencies with Ads API credentials | Shoppers, on the storefront | Nobody directly — it’s a backend ranking layer |
| What it answers | “How is my account doing, and can you fix this?” | “Let my AI client call the Ads API for me” | “What should I buy?” | Not user-facing — infers query intent for search |
| Takes action on your behalf? | Yes, with permission (inventory, compliance, ads, listings) | Yes, if you enable write tools (campaign create/update/delete) | No — it recommends, shopper still buys | No — it’s a ranking signal, not an assistant |
| Access requirement | Seller Central account, U.S. store | Approved Amazon Ads API credentials | None — built into the shopping app | None — invisible infrastructure |
The practical rule: if the question is about your seller account, Seller Assistant is the relevant tool. If it’s about automating ad account operations from your own software, that’s the Ads MCP Server. If it’s about how shoppers find and evaluate your listing, that’s Rufus/Alexa for Shopping on the front end and COSMO underneath search ranking. None of the four substitute for each other, and Amazon has kept their documentation on separate pages for a reason.
What Sellers Should Do
- Check the current name in your own Seller Central, not in old blog posts. If your account shows “Seller Assistant” rather than “Amelia,” that is expected — it is not a different, newer tool you are missing.
- Review agentic actions before approving them, especially early on. The 90% acceptance rate is an average, not a guarantee any specific recommendation is right for your catalog; compliance and ad-spend actions carry real consequences if approved on autopilot.
- Use it for the things Amazon documents, not for things it doesn’t. Sales and traffic queries, inventory demand analysis, and account-health alerts are documented functions. Pricing decisions and buy-box strategy are not — keep those in your own process or in a dedicated tool.
- Don’t assume international availability. If you sell outside the U.S. store, confirm the feature is live in your marketplace before building a workflow around it; both official posts scope the rollout to the U.S. first.
- Cross-check anything the assistant tells you against your own reports. Amelia/Seller Assistant reads the same underlying data your Business Reports do; it summarizes, it doesn’t audit. Our Seller Central business reports guide covers reading those reports directly when a number needs verifying.
For sellers evaluating whether to lean on Amazon’s built-in assistant versus a dedicated third-party stack for inventory or advertising work, the Amazon seller tools directory and AMZFinder, an independent site that organizes seller tools by workflow, are reasonable places to compare what a paid tool adds on top of what Amazon now includes for free.
Common Mistakes
- Calling Amelia a separate product from Seller Assistant. They are the same assistant at two points in Amazon’s own naming, not a predecessor tool that got replaced by something new.
- Assuming “agentic” means unsupervised. Every documented action-taking capability is qualified with “with permission” in Amazon’s own text.
- Treating Canvas as “Amelia 2.0.” Canvas is a visualization layer built on the same architecture, launched separately in March 2026 — not a rename or a successor.
- Quoting a specific ranking-factor or pricing-control claim as Amazon’s position. Neither official post makes that claim; it does not appear in the material reviewed for this guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Project Amelia the same thing as Amazon’s Seller Assistant?
Yes, based on Amazon’s own posts. Project Amelia was the September 2024 launch codename; Amazon’s September 2025 post about the agentic upgrade refers back to “last year” without introducing a new product, and its current materials use “Seller Assistant.” Amazon has not published an explicit “we renamed it” statement, but continuity between the two names is established by that reference.
What can Project Amelia / Seller Assistant actually do today?
Per Amazon’s own posts checked 2026-09-18: answer plain-language questions about your seller account, retrieve sales and traffic data, monitor account health, help with compliance issues, generate advertising creative and listings, and — with your permission — take agentic actions like coordinating inventory reorders. It does not control pricing or negotiate on your behalf.
Is Seller Assistant available outside the United States?
Both the 2024 and 2025 official posts scope general availability to U.S. sellers, with expansion to other countries described only as “coming months” or “later this year” with no published country list or date as of 2026-09-18. Check your own Seller Central for current availability rather than assuming U.S. parity.
Is Amazon Canvas a replacement for Project Amelia?
No. Amazon describes Canvas, launched in early March 2026 for U.S. and U.K. sellers, as working “together with Seller Assistant” and built on its agentic architecture — a visual dashboard for the same underlying AI, not a different or newer assistant.
How is Seller Assistant different from the Amazon Ads MCP Server?
Seller Assistant operates inside Seller Central for any signed-in seller and needs no separate credentials. The Ads MCP Server is a developer-facing protocol layer that requires approved Amazon Ads API credentials and is meant for connecting a seller’s own AI client to advertising operations — see our Ads MCP Server guide for that credential process.
Does Amazon publish how many sellers use it?
Partially. One aboutamazon.com post states more than 230,000 monthly users in 2025 for Seller Assistant, with a reported 90%-plus acceptance rate on recommended actions. Amazon has not published a cumulative lifetime user count or independently audited that acceptance figure as of 2026-09-18.
The Bottom Line
Project Amelia did not disappear — it is the assistant Amazon now calls Seller Assistant, expanded in September 2025 from a question-answering tool into one that can take permitted actions on inventory, compliance, and advertising. What has not changed is the U.S.-first rollout and the absence of a documented pricing or buy-box function. Read the current Seller Central name as an update to the same tool, keep the agentic layer’s “with permission” boundary in mind before approving anything at scale, and don’t let Canvas, the Ads MCP Server, or Rufus/Alexa for Shopping get mixed into the same conversation — each one answers a different question about your Amazon business.