Shopify is rolling out its new AI chatbot, Sidekick, as part of its Summer 2024 update. Sidekick was originally released last year to help merchants with tasks like creating discount codes, generating store reports and generating ideas for blog posts. Sidekick is currently available to merchants with English stores in North America, but Shopify plans to expand its availability to other languages ​​and regions.

In addition to Sidekick, Shopify announced several other AI tools to improve merchant efficiency. A notable feature is AI-powered product classification, which helps marketers by automatically suggesting taxonomies for product listings, making products easier to discover. Another tool provides suggested responses to customer chats in Shopify Inbox, although these responses must be completed by the seller. Shopify is considering allowing AI to handle customer chats independently in the future.

Shopify is also improving its AI-powered image generator, which launched in January, by integrating it into its iOS and Android apps and expanding its use in the Shopify admin. Over the past six months, Shopify traders have saved more than 1 million AI -generated images, highlighting the popularity and efficiency of the tool.