Shopify Launches AI Chatbot Sidekick Early Access Version

Shopify announced on Monday that its new artificial intelligence "Sidekick" chatbot is officially launching as part of its "Summer 2024 Edition" update.

Sidekick, which was first revealed by the company last year, is a support chatbot for merchants that can assist them in creating discount codes, generating store reports, or coming up with blog post ideas, among other things. While this may sound like a fairly typical AI chatbot functionality, it appears to be a useful way to obtain help or assistance, especially if Shopify continues to adjust the chatbot based on merchant needs.

Sidekick has already been rolled out in thousands of Shopify stores, but is currently limited to use by merchants in English-speaking stores in North America, according to Vanessa Lee, Vice President of Product at Shopify. If you don't have Sidekick but would like to try it out, you can join the waitlist. Lee also mentioned that the company plans to expand its availability to other languages and regions.

Shopify also announced a series of other AI-related updates. One of them is AI-driven product categorization, which could potentially save merchants a significant amount of time. When building a product list, Shopify's technology can automatically suggest relevant categories for the product - categories that make the list easier to discover - so you don't have to input them manually. If Shopify's suggestions are incorrect, you can make manual changes.

Another AI tool provides suggested replies for customer chats received through Shopify Inbox. Currently, these replies are only suggestions, meaning that merchants will need to review and send the replies themselves. Lee mentioned that Shopify is open to customers chatting with AI chatbots that represent the merchants, but for now, the company has chosen to involve humans "until we are very confident that there won't be any issues."

Shopify has also brought its AI image generator, launched in January, to its iOS and Android apps, and allows merchants to use it in more places within the Shopify admin interface. The company stated that Shopify merchants have saved over one million AI-generated images in the past six months.