Shopify AI Sidekick is officially live

Shopify is officially launching its new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot “Sidekick” with early access as part of its “Summer 2024 Release” updates. Introduced last year, Sidekick aims to assist store owners in various matters. Functions such as creating discount codes, preparing reports about your store and offering blog post suggestions are among the supports offered by Sidekick. These features could be quite useful if Shopify continues to adapt the chatbot to the needs of store owners.

Shopify AI Sidekick: New assistant for store owners

Sidekick is currently active in thousands of Shopify stores, but is only available for English-language stores in North America. In an interview with The Verge, Vanessa Lee, Shopify’s product manager, stated that Sidekick is aimed to be available in other languages ​​and regions. If you don’t have Sidekick and want to try it, you can sign up for the waitlist.

On the other hand, Shopify has made other AI-focused announcements as well. One of these, the AI-supported product categorization feature, can save store owners a lot of time. When listing a product, Shopify’s technology automatically suggests the product’s taxonomy. These recommendations are used to make product listings easier to find. If the proposed taxonomy is not correct, there is also the possibility to change it manually.

Another AI tool will offer suggested responses to customer chats coming through Shopify Inbox. At this time, these responses are only suggestions and the final response must be sent by the store owners. Lee noted that customers are open to the possibility of chatting with an AI chatbot that speaks on behalf of the store owner, but for now they prefer human-based responses.

Shopify also brings the AI-supported rendering tool, which it launched in January, to iOS and Android applications. Store owners will be able to use this tool in more places in the Shopify admin panel. Shopify announced that more than 1 million AI-generated images have been saved by store owners in the last six months.

Shopify’s AI-powered innovations aim to ease the operational burden of store owners and make business processes more efficient. In particular, Sidekick stands out as an important assistant in the daily work of store owners.