Mercado Libre(opens in a new window) is Latin America’s largest e-commerce and fintech company. In their 25-year history, Mercado Libre has grown exponentially, earning them the title of most valuable company in LATAM.
The company has successfully implemented AI solutions to maintain their competitive edge in a crowded market. Among these initiatives is Verdi, a development platform layer using GPT-4o, GPT-4o mini, and GPT-3.5 Turbo, which is transforming how Mercado Libre handles customer service and other complex tasks.
Driving productivity and efficiency gains with OpenAI
For years, Mercado Libre has used AI to streamline processes and enhance user experiences. They use OpenAI’s API to:
- Improve inventory capacity: GPT-4 Vision tags and completes product listings, enabling Mercado to catalog 100x more products than before in a span of two years.
- Detect fraud: GPT-4 evaluates data on millions of product listings each day, improving fraud detection accuracy to nearly 99% for flagged items.
- Customize product descriptions: Mercado uses GPT-3.5 and 4 to translate product titles and descriptions, adapting to nuanced Spanish and Portuguese dialects.
- Increase orders: Automated review summaries, powered by GPT-4o mini, help users quickly grasp product feedback, which increases orders where the feature is available.
- Personalize notifications: Tailored push notifications drive higher engagement by recommending products based on individual preferences.
While these improvements were beneficial, the team saw even greater potential. “Using AI for cataloging and summarizing reviews is interesting and helpful, but not transformational,” says Daniel Rabinovich, Mercado Libre’s COO. “We needed a solution that could handle intricate, high-stakes tasks autonomously and more efficiently than human operators.”
Saving millions with a new development platform
Enter Verdi, Mercado Libre’s new AI development platform, which allows any developer to build with LLMs. Designed for seamless integration, simplicity, and security, Verdi streamlines the work of Mercado’s 17,000 developers responsible for over 30,000 microservices.
Though a developer can build any type of application on top of Verdi, one of its first and most significant applications is handling customer service mediation autonomously. Traditionally, resolving disputes between buyers and sellers requires time-consuming human mediation. Verdi changes this by allowing the AI to manage these interactions, even interfacing with external APIs and internal employees when necessary.
In just a few months, Verdi has started to handle 10% of customer service mediation on one of Mercado’s major sites. This shift will revolutionize how Mercado Libre handles customer service across all of their platforms, with the potential to support the tasks of 9,000 human operators and autonomously manage customer service decisions involving $450 million annually.
“With Verdi, humans become co-pilots to the AI instead of the other way around,” Rabinovich explains. “This platform can autonomously decide on cases, manage complex interactions, and even handle tasks requiring a human touch, informed by security protocols and guardrails built into the platform.”
Delivering a new standard with security and routing logic
Unlike other AI development platforms, Verdi was built to be a comprehensive solution capable of handling complex, multi-faceted tasks autonomously. It integrates various AI capabilities, such as language models, Python nodes, and APIs, to create a robust, scalable platform.
The biggest difference between Verdi and other solutions is that in Verdi, natural language remains the central mode of interaction throughout the development process. Developers never see the source code. Security, guardrails, and routing logic are also built right in.
“When looking for a development platform, we didn’t see one that would solve our need for fast iteration while guaranteeing scalability and security,” says Sebastian Barrios, SVP of Technology. “So we designed our ideal AI platform using GPT-4, with a focus on lowering cognitive load and enabling the entire organization to iterate, develop, and deploy new innovative solutions.”
Building Verdi for simplicity and scale
Verdi supports developers in building AI-driven applications by providing a structured framework resembling a neural network:
Powered by GPT-4o’s context understanding and multi-modal capabilities, Verdi can process and interpret diverse data types. A “proof of damage” node, for example, could include calls to GPT-4o, using Vision to interpret what is broken or missing from a customer’s item.
Skills can also connect. In this product return example, a “return” skill can talk to the “shipping” skill without a human getting involved. These parameters are determined by Mercado Libre’s teams and supported within Verdi’s framework.
The platform’s scalability and flexibility are also significant advantages. Verdi operates within Mercado Libre’s internal developer platform, providing a unified environment for developers to create, deploy, test, and manage applications efficiently. With built-in unit testing capabilities, developers can ensure code quality and reliability from the start. This integration ensures that Verdi can continuously evolve, incorporating new AI models and capabilities as they become available.
Expanding Verdi to solve any problem
Based on the success they’ve seen in customer service, Mercado Libre has started deploying Verdi to their logistics network to provide even faster shipping and reduce late deliveries.
They also plan to expand Verdi’s capabilities further, integrating more advanced AI solutions like search assistants and product recommendations to better meet Mercado Pago’s 50 million active users each quarter.
“Verdi is designed to solve any problem,” says Rabinovich. “It’s a bold statement, but we’re confident in its potential to transform our operations. From handling routine customer queries to managing high-stakes disputes, Verdi is setting a new standard.”
