Shopify's new AI chatbot, “Sidekick,” is officially launching in early access, the company announced as part of its “Summer ‘24 Edition” updates on Monday.
What Sidekick can do for you
Sidekick, first revealed last year, is a merchant support chatbot that can assist with creating discount codes, generating store reports, and suggesting blog post ideas. While these tasks might seem typical for an AI chatbot, Sidekick's real value lies in its potential to provide tailored support for merchants, making it a handy tool for managing your store.
Currently, Sidekick lives across thousands of Shopify stores but is limited to merchants with English stores in North America. In an interview, Vanessa Lee, Shopify's vice president of product, mentioned that those who don't have access to Sidekick yet can join the waitlist. Shopify plans to expand the chatbot's availability to other languages and regions.
More AI tools to save you time
Shopify has also introduced several AI-focused features to save merchants time and effort. One such feature is AI-powered product categorization. As you build a product listing, Shopify's technology can automatically suggest the appropriate taxonomy for the product. This taxonomy helps make listings more discoverable. If the suggestions aren't accurate, you can manually adjust them.
Another new tool offers suggested replies for customer chats via Shopify Inbox. These replies are just recommendations, so merchants must review and send the responses themselves. While Shopify is considering allowing AI to communicate directly with customers on merchants' behalf, they prefer to keep a human in the loop to ensure accuracy and customer satisfaction.
AI image generator expands to mobile
In addition to these features, Shopify is bringing its AI-powered image generator, launched in January, to its iOS and Android apps. Merchants can now use this tool in more areas within the Shopify admin. According to Shopify, merchants have saved over 1 million AI-generated images in the past six months, highlighting the tool's popularity and usefulness.
With these updates, Shopify continues to enhance its platform, providing merchants with innovative AI tools to streamline their operations and improve their online stores.
