Amazon stops millions of counterfeit goods with help from AI

4/4/2023

Amazon says it removed over 6 million counterfeit goods from circulation.

Amazon is combining human expertise with artificial intelligence (AI) to prevent the sale of counterfeit items on its platform.

The e-tail titan is releasing its third annual Brand Protection Report, highlighting the company's efforts to detect and prevent counterfeit products in its supply chain and on its site in 2022. The report highlights Amazon’s efforts in several key areas, including:

Deterring bad actors: In 2022, Amazon says it stopped over 800,000 attempts to create new selling accounts, preventing those bad actors from publishing any products for sale. This was down from 2.5 million attempts in 2021, and 6 million attempts in 2020.

Adoption of brand protection tools: During 2022, Amazon reported that adoption of its brand protection programs continued to grow. At the same time, the absolute number of valid notices of infringement filed by brands in Amazon Brand Registry decreased by over 35%.

Holding counterfeiters accountable: In 2022, Amazon’s Counterfeit Crimes Unit sued or referred for investigation over 1,300 criminals in the U.S., U.K., E.U., and China. The company continued to partner with brands and law enforcement to stop bad actors, and also worked to identify, seize, and dispose of over 6 million counterfeit products. According to Amazon, this effort prevented the disposed counterfeit goods from being resold anywhere in the supply chain.

Consumer education: In partnership with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Amazon built marketing campaigns designed to help educated consumers about how to shop safely and ensure they were purchasing authentic products, while also ensuring they understood the harm and dangers of purchasing counterfeits. Amazon tracked the reach of these campaigns as extending to over 70 million consumers in the U.S.

“We take pride in the progress our organization has made this past year, specifically further evolving our technology to stay ahead of bad actors and doubling down on our criminal referral and litigation efforts,” said Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon VP of Worldwide Selling Partner Services. “We’re appreciative of the growing industry-wide collaboration in this space, and look forward to continuing to innovate and work together to drive counterfeits to zero.”

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