Shopify’s “Sidekick” AI chatbot for merchants is now available in early access

Shopify’s up-to-date “Sidekick” AI chatbot is officially launching in early access, the company announced as part of its “Summer ’24 Edition” update announced on Monday.

Sidekick, which the company first revealed last year, works as a support chatbot for sellers, helping them do things like create discount codes, generate reports about your store or suggest ideas for blog posts. Sure, it sounds like a pretty typical AI chatbot, but it seems like it could be a useful way to get lend a hand or support, especially if Shopify continues to tailor its chatbot to merchants’ needs.

Sidekick is available in thousands of Shopify stores, but is currently restricted to merchants that have English-language stores in North America, says Vanessa Lee, Shopify’s vice president of product, in an interview Edge. If you don’t have a Sidekick and want to give it a try, you can sign up for the waiting list. Lee says the company wants to make it available in other languages ​​and locales.

Shopify is also making several other AI-related announcements. One of them, AI-powered product categorization, seems to actually save sellers a lot of time. When you list your products, Shopify’s technology can automatically suggest a product taxonomy – a taxonomy used to lend a hand you find deals – that might match that product, so you don’t have to enter it yourself. If Shopify’s suggestions aren’t right, you can manually change the items.

Another AI tool will offer suggested replies to customer chats coming through Shopify Inbox. At this time, these responses are suggestions only, meaning it will be up to sellers to finalize and actually send the response. Lee says Shopify is open to the possibility of allowing customers to chat with an AI chatbot that speaks on behalf of the seller, but for now the company has decided to keep a human informed “until we’re sure nothing will happen.”

Shopify is also bringing its AI-powered image generator, which launched in January, to its iOS and Android apps, allowing sellers to apply it in more places in their stores Shopify admin. The company claims that Shopify merchants have saved over 1 million AI-generated images over a six-month period.