Shopify, following the footsteps of numerous other major tech companies, is embracing generative AI technology.
During its bi-annual Editions conference, the ecommerce giant unveiled an expanded range of features under the banner of “Shopify Magic,” their all-encompassing term for generative AI capabilities.
Today, Shopify Magic can provide personalized responses to merchants’ customers based on their past interactions and store policies. It can also generate content for blog posts, product descriptions, and marketing emails. Introducing a new chatbot-style AI tool named Sidekick, Shopify can now comprehend and interpret business-related questions and prompts.
Miqdad Jaffer, Shopify’s head of product for AI, emphasized their commitment to keeping businesses at the forefront of technology. He mentioned that there is tremendous untapped potential for AI in entrepreneurship, and Shopify aims to make this powerful technology accessible to businesses of all sizes.
The advanced capabilities of Shopify Magic are made possible by leveraging proprietary Shopify data, including merchant business data, combined with large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It’s important to note that data and conversations are not shared with third parties.
Using this data and these models, Shopify Magic can create blog posts for various occasions, such as holidays, business milestones, and marketing campaigns. Merchants can customize the tone and translate content into different languages. Additionally, Magic can now automatically generate content for customer emails based on brief prompts, handling tasks like crafting weekly newsletters and announcements.
To address concerns about the potential for LLMs to generate false or biased content, Shopify merchants have the opportunity to review the content created by Magic before it is published. Moreover, Shopify’s AI features are strictly prohibited from making changes to any of Shopify’s production systems.
The most notable announcement is the introduction of Sidekick, a conversational AI assistant with extensive knowledge of Shopify. Sidekick can comprehend questions related to business operations and assist with tasks like summarizing sales information and conducting basic product research. Moreover, Sidekick can execute specific tasks, such as creating reports on a merchant’s best-selling products or guiding them through email campaign orchestration.
In a demo video shared by Shopify’s co-founder and CEO, Tobi Lütke, Sidekick is seen interacting with a snowsports supply merchant, offering insights on declining sales and suggesting automatic discounts for all products in the merchant’s store.
Sidekick appears to be a version of ChatGPT optimized for e-commerce applications, aligning with Shopify’s vision of using AI to support businesses in their growth and success. Jaffer expressed that these features, including Sidekick, are continuously evolving to cater to the specific needs of Shopify’s merchants.
