Like other tech giants, Shopify too has begun inclining towards generative AI. At its bi-annual Editions conference, Shopify announced the launch of an expanded suite of features under Shopify Magic, which is the catch-all brand for generative AI.
Shopify Magic has the capability to answer merchants’ customers as per their conversation histories and store policies. It can also efficiently generate blog posts, product descriptions and even marketing email content. Now, with its latest chatbot-like AI tool known as Sidekick, Shopify can not only understand but even interpret questions related to decision-making.
We believe that there isn’t any corner of the internet that will benefit more from AI than the pursuit of people building and growing their own businesses. Features [like Sidekick] are constantly evolving to tailor to and act on the needs of our merchants.
Miqdad Jaffer, Head of product for AI, Shopify
Exploring Untapped Potential For AI And Entrepreneurs
In an email interview with TechCrunch, Miqdad Jaffer, Shopify’s head of product for AI said, “We believe it’s our responsibility to keep the businesses we power on the cutting edge of technology. There’s still so much untapped potential for AI and entrepreneurs, and we’re deeply committed to making the power of AI accessible to businesses of all sizes.”
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Capabilities of Shopify Magic are powered by an effective combination of proprietary Shopify data, including large language models (LLMs) such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and merchant business data. It has been architected in such a way that there is no breach of data and conversations.
Using data and models, Shopify Magic is even capable of generating blog posts for important events such as the holiday sale season, business milestones and marketing campaign ideas. Merchants can easily translate their content into the language of their choice and choose the tone of their messages. Magic can also help merchants to create marketing emails, and write announcements and weekly newsletters.
Shopify merchants can review the copy before it goes live. Assuring extra safety measures, Shopify’s AI features cannot write, edit or make changes to Shopify production systems on their own, stressed Jaffer.
Sidekick
Sidekick is a conversational AI assistant train that has been properly trained to “know and understand all of Shopify,” according to Jaffer. It can process and understand questions like, “How do I set up a discount for a holiday sale?” and “Help me segment my customers so I can better engage them in my marketing”.
Sidekick efficiently performs work like basic product research and summarizing information and details across sales documents. It can also be instructed to complete specific to-do items like creating reports of best-selling products or helping a merchant with an email campaign orchestration tutorial. It can also modify the shop designs of merchants, suggest themes and copy for the main banner and add product collections to the home page.
Lutke’s Announcement of Sidekick
In a demo video shared by Shopify co-founder and CEO Tobi Lütke on Twitter a few weeks back, Sidekick can be seen responding to a series of queries from a snowsports supply merchant. When asked why sales slowed down from March to July, Sidekick answered that it was probably because of minimal snow, along with a chart showing sales volumes every month.
Announcing Sidekick on July 12 this year on Twitter, Lutke said: “Technology has advanced so much in the last year that this is now possible. And we are building this directly into Shopify and we could not be more excited about it. We believe entrepreneurs are heroes, this is our foundational belief here, and every hero needs a Sidekick.”
The CEO further explained how Sidekick will help Shopify merchants to manage business operations and challenges with real-time solutions. “Every entrepreneur has tons of questions. Sidekick will have the answers that are specific to your business. It is built for the purpose of helping you with the entrepreneurial journey. One of the best things about Sidekick is that it can take things off your to-do lists, and if you so choose, do them for you. It will not question your vision, but if there’s a big change you want to make, it’ll definitely be able to help you with that too,” he said.
“Sidekick knows everything that Shopify knows. That includes how to design your store, that includes developer documentation, and economic trends,” Lutke added.
“I can’t actually think of any corner of the Internet that will benefit more from AI than the pursuit of people building their own businesses. I’ve been part of the technology industry since the mid-nineties. I’ve never seen something like AI. This will be an unbelievable boon to entrepreneurship,” the Shopify CEO concluded.
“We believe that there isn’t any corner of the internet that will benefit more from AI than the pursuit of people building and growing their own businesses. Features [like Sidekick] are constantly evolving to tailor to and act on the needs of our merchants,” said Jaffer.
The Dawn of AI Era
In May 2023, Shopify announced the termination of 20 percent of staff and selling out Shopify Logistics to San Francisco-based supply chain management company Flexport. In a blog published on May 4, Lutke announced the company’s decision to lay off 20 percent of its employees. In the same, he emphasized Shopify’s mission saying that the company now sees the potential of artificial intelligence in making the copilot for entrepreneurship possible.
“Now we are at the dawn of the AI era and the new capabilities that are unlocked by that are unprecedented. Shopify has the privilege of being amongst the companies with the best chances of using AI to help our customers. A copilot for entrepreneurship is now possible. Our main quest demands from us to build the best thing that is now possible, and that has just changed entirely,” Lutke explained.
