If agentic is the future of AI-driven commerce, Amazon just took yet more significant strides ahead of its competition. Its newly enhanced Seller Assistant has evolved from a reactive support system to an autonomous business co-pilot, marking Amazon’s most ambitious leap into agentic commerce yet.Amazon’s Seller Assistant – formerly Project Amelia – began as a basic AI support tool for answering seller questions. Now it’s become something fundamentally different. The distinction between Amazon’s generative and agentic AI capabilities matters enormously. While generative AI creates content like listing optimization and lifestyle imagery, agentic AI acts independently. The generative features announced at Accelerate, including Creator Studio for professional image and video creation, are powerful but not unique – sellers could access similar tools elsewhere.The agentic capabilities represent a different category entirely. Amazon’s enhanced Seller Assistant can now “move beyond responding, and towards actually pursuing your goals.” Instead of waiting for seller requests, it proactively flags slow-moving inventory before storage fees hit and automatically executes approved pricing strategies.This extends into comprehensive business management. The AI will handle end-to-end execution – booking inventory shipments, monitoring listings for compliance violations, and building marketing campaigns. Amazon positions this as an AI partner that “feels like guidance from a seasoned partner who’s worked with you for years” – one that reasons, plans, and executes rather than simply responding to queries.It’s a meaningful progression from Amazon’s historically supply-centric AI strategy that prioritized operational efficiency and customer satisfaction over seller success. While Amazon’s previous AI investments focused on robots, delivery optimization, and shopping assistants like Rufus, Seller Assistant’s agentic capabilities now address the demand-generation side that sellers need most.The timing isn’t coincidental, either. Amazon is essentially using millions of sellers as a testing ground for agentic capabilities it will inevitably deploy on the shopper side. Every compliance check automated, every inventory decision optimized, and every pricing strategy executed teaches Amazon’s systems how autonomous commerce actually works. If AI can manage a seller’s entire Black Friday campaign autonomously, it’s a short leap to AI managing a consumer’s entire holiday shopping list.This seller-first approach cleverly sidesteps trust barriers while creating competitive moats. As businesses rely on Seller Assistant for operational decisions, they become more deeply embedded in Amazon’s ecosystem. Meanwhile, competitors must match the capabilities that Amazon has been refining through millions of real-world seller interactions.The strategy aligns perfectly with Amazon’s customer obsession. Better compliance monitoring ensures accurate listings; automated inventory management prevents stockouts; AI-generated creative improves conversion rates. These aren’t just seller benefits – they’re customer experience improvements disguised as merchant tools.Amazon’s continued transition from retailer to infrastructure provider – further highlighted by another Accelerate announcement that Multi-Channel Fulfillment has now expanded to integrate with Walmart and Shein – accelerates with each agentic capability. The company is building toward an autonomous commerce future worth potentially $1.7 trillion by 2030, starting where trust barriers are lowest and profit motivations are highest.Agentic commerce may ultimately join voice shopping and virtual reality in the graveyard of overhyped retail technologies. But if it reaches even a fraction of its projected potential, Amazon’s seller-side experiments will have provided an insurmountable head start in automating vast swathes of the e-commerce industry.