Live selling startup CommentSold uses AI to generate shoppable, social-ready clips

CommentSold, the e-commerce tech startup that provides web and video tools to online retailers, launched a new generative AI–powered tool on Wednesday that can sift through livestreamed footage and generate short product explainer videos for sellers to post to their website, app and social media platforms.

The “AI ClipHero” feature creates short clips from livestreamed selling events, which often last for hours. Instead of retailers rewatching content and scouring for relevant clips to edit and post, CommentSold’s new tool saves them some time by automatically identifying the most interesting parts of the livestream for customers who missed the event to get a brief summary of the products. The tool also uses speech recognition to generate captions.

“Shoppable ‘explainer’ videos are the most powerful video commerce medium right now, with TikTok and Instagram becoming the primary way Gen Z discovers, learns about products and purchases products. However, creating shoppable videos [requires] significant production times,” CommentSold CEO Gautam Goswami told TechCrunch.

AI-powered clipping software isn’t new, but not many companies have developed AI-powered tools specifically designed for live commerce. Various startups (Powder, Eklipse, and others), though, have introduced similar features for content creators to capture highlights from gaming streams.

“Companies like TikTok and Twitch have been trying to create AI that can create shoppable videos from livestream events … CommentSold is now the first provider to launch a commercially available AI, which learns from millions of hours of livestreams in CommentSold’s library to identify and create product explainer videos from livestream selling events,” Goswami said.

In addition to its AI ClipHero feature, CommentSold recently rolled out PopClips, which allows retailers to tag products in a banner at the bottom of each clip to direct customers to the product page and drive more sales. The company also provides tools for custom website and mobile app building, as well as systems to automate inventory, invoices, shipping, and more.

Since launching in 2017, CommentSold now helps over 7,000 small and midsized businesses deliver live shopping and e-commerce experiences. According to the company, it has facilitated the sale of over 180 million items with more than $4.4 billion in lifetime gross merchandise value (GMV), up from $3.8 billion in 2023.

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