How we’re using AI innovations to stop fraud and counterfeits
We recently released our Brand Protection report, which demonstrates our efforts to stop bad actors and protect your business from counterfeit products through industry-leading technology and strategic partnerships.
In 2024, we invested more than a billion dollars and employed thousands of people—including machine learning scientists, software developers, and expert investigators—to help protect customers, brands, selling partners, and our store from counterfeit, fraud, and other forms of abuse.
The report outlines the progress we’ve made, including the following highlights:
- In 2024, we identified, seized, and appropriately disposed of more than 15 million counterfeit products worldwide, preventing them from harming customers or being resold elsewhere in the retail supply chain.
- Since its launch in 2020, Amazon's Counterfeit Crimes Unit has pursued more than 24,000 bad actors through litigation and criminal referrals to law enforcement.
- Through our continued investment in AI, our improved proactive controls blocked more than 99 percent of suspected infringing listings before the brand owners had to find and report them.
- Since 2020, while the number of products available for sale in our store has continued to grow, we have seen around a 35-percent decrease in the total valid notices of infringement submitted by brands.
- More than 2.5 billion product units have been verified as genuine through our Transparency program, which has enrolled 88,000 brands worldwide, including Fortune 500 companies, global brands, startups, and small businesses.
We remain committed to continued advancements, and we will not rest until we drive counterfeits to zero.
For more detailed updates on our strategic areas of focus and the progress we’ve made, go to the Brand Protection report.
To report abusive customers or sellers, go to Report abuse.
24 replies
Seller_zSWez2Mzpdboa
Some more propaganda, to cover up for all that is wrong with Amazon.
Seller_NxPuqak8YNJEF
does the report also describe the inappropriately disposed number? or does that 15 million INCLUDE the inappropriately ones?
does the report talk about all the bad actors still operating on Amazon? any sort of percentage so we know how much farther is left to go?
and is this including the listings taken down, even when the brand owner is the one selling the brand and has to work hard to get the listings back up? is amazon taking credit for the mistakes made in taking down the wrong listings, or disabling listings for false reasons?
yet silently ignoring the data about INvalid notices of infringement. I am guessing while the valid has gone down by 35 percent, that the invalid ones have gone up by more than 35 percent.
Seller_otDFihTxKiDRD
In order to give a toss, I would really need to see Amazon post about how they are stopping fraudulent returns~ and stopping buyers from picking false reasons in order to not have to pay the return shipping.
Till then, entirely unimpressed.
MJ, still a grumpy bookseller.
Seller_HP0CuTSNvJvu9
"How we’re using AI innovations to stop fraud and counterfeits"
Literally the scariest thing I've heard in 2025.
Seller_HP0CuTSNvJvu9
So I assume the INVALID notices of infringement saw a 65% increase?
Seller_ALZGvM9vhFf03
This is all great news... I wish Amazon reported the percentage of "blocked more than 99 percent of suspected infringing listings" that were identified incorrectly. Anecdotal evidence that it is around 30%...
Seller_jvfhuXWiqaKrs
Amazon needs to step up and do a better job at evaluating FBA returns for high priced products where counterfeiting is a known issue.
As a seller of expensive electronics, we're a common victim of a scam where someone buys our product via FBA, puts a counterfeit in the box, returns the counterfeit to Amazon FBA, and keeps our original authentic product. Amazon FBA returns receiving personnel FAIL TO IDENTIFY THE COUNTERFEIT, check it back into inventory as New, and the product gets resold again, to an irate customer who accuses us of selling counterfeits, then in addition to the reputational damage and customer service headache, we then have to deal with "suspected inauthentic" policy violations.
Obviously not every FBA receiving associate can be expected to be an expert authenticity reviewer for every product in the world, but simply checking the weight of the returned box versus the weight of the item in Amazon's records could catch some proportion of switcheroo returns, as could visually inspecting the box for signs of being opened when the customer claims they're returning it as New.
Seller_oDXVaydIpi3Hi
Let's be honest....
it was more like 2 million and the other 13 million were legitimate items where new sellers did RA. Amazon knew this when it was listed - but allowed it to happen and then profited off of it.
Most of that 99% was your AI incorrectly flagging items like "Mac and Cheese" imagining it was a "MAC" computer.
Amazon created another cash cow with transparency. It helped create the issue and profited off of the solution. Ingenious - but still.
Most abusive sellers, buyers, and "reviewers" that are actually sellers don't have things done to them. Love to believe we're wrong - but the numbers we see and info from other sellers says we are right.
Seller_r9wMm8LrE5iKj
The only thing on this platform that scares me more than someone (possibly Amazon) stealing our IP is Amazon killing our business through poor automation and incompetence. Your apparent belief that this stuff actually works (when all consumer-facing AI comes with disclaimers "AI often gets it wrong, sanity-check results") just means you'll remove the human component necessary to make this work.
And what do your percentages mean, when you continue to onboard new sellers from a sus country at an alarming rate? Stopping 99% of the bad sellers you shouldn't have let on in the first place, but increasing onboarding a couple of orders of magnitude, puts us right back where we started.
And could it be that your reduction in VALID infringement notices is simply your poor automation kicking out requests? See the other mod-originated thread about reporting brand name changes ... you don't even have a channel for this (the single most important infringement), and all attempts to report on the closest approximation of the truth available results in rejection. All you see coming out of your A/B testing is that "complaints go down" when we break things this way. "A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking."
For a company driven by metrics, you guys are really bad at math.
Seller_hbEyVsDAOl02S
The only thing amazon is using Ai for is terribly written post like this. Amazon will be owned by a chinese shell company in 10yrs and their only goal from now until that time is to squeeze all US sellers of all profits. To all my US businesses some of us have became way to dependent on amazon and the gravy train just ended. Every day this year will be a loss for any US sellers
