Shopify recently announced a series of updates centered on artificial intelligence, aiming to provide merchants with more convenient and efficient operational support. The most eye-catching one is the launch of Sidekick, an AI chatbot that can help merchants create discount codes, generate store reports, and even provide blog post ideas. This marks an important step for Shopify in using AI technology to improve merchant experience, giving its platform more intelligent functions.
Shopify announced a series of artificial intelligence-focused updates on Monday, including the launch of an early version of its AI chatbot "Sidekick." Sidekick is designed to provide merchants with a support chatbot that helps them create discount codes, generate store reports, or suggest blog post ideas, among other things.
While this sounds like a pretty common AI chatbot feature, it seems like it could become a useful way to get help or support if Shopify continues to tailor the chatbot's capabilities to merchant needs.
Vanessa Lee, Shopify's vice president of product, said in an interview that although Sidekick has been launched in thousands of Shopify stores, it is currently only available to merchants with English stores in North America. But if you want to try Sidekick, you can sign up for the waitlist on the official website. Lee said the company hopes Sidekick will be rolled out in other languages and regions as well.
In addition to Sidekick, Shopify has made other AI-focused announcements. For example, AI-based product classification can save merchants a lot of time. As you build your product listings, Shopify's technology can automatically suggest appropriate taxonomies for that product to make your listings more discoverable.
Additionally, Shopify has launched another AI tool that provides suggested responses to customer chats that come in through the Shopify inbox. For now, these responses are just suggestions and merchants must finalize and actually send the responses. Lee said Shopify is open to the possibility of letting customers chat with an AI chatbot that speaks on behalf of merchants, but so far the company has chosen to keep humans involved until they're very confident there won't be problems.
Highlight:
- Shopify launches AI chatbot "Sidekick" to provide support for merchants.
- Sidekick is currently only available to merchants with English-language stores in North America.
- Shopify is also rolling out other AI-focused updates, such as AI-based product categorization and AI tools for customer chat responses.
All in all, Shopify's series of AI updates show its commitment to using AI technology to improve merchant efficiency and customer experience. The launch of tools such as Sidekick indicates that e-commerce platforms will become more intelligent in the future and provide merchants with stronger operational support. We look forward to Shopify further expanding the functionality and scope of Sidekick in the future.