Shopify Sidekick AI – What We Know So Far (Nov 2023)

If your finger is on the ecommerce pulse, you're likely eagerly anticipating more information about Shopify's new update: a new AI assistant called Sidekick. 

Marketed as Shopify's ‘AI-powered assistant for merchants,' we're intrigued to learn more about what Sidekick does.

So, needless to say, we were thrilled that Shopify's Founder and CEO, Tobias Lütke, dropped a video announcement on 12th July 2023. During which he said, ‘We believe that entrepreneurs are heroes. This is our foundational belief, and every hero needs a sidekick…’

…this got us stoked.

So, of course, we've reviewed the clip frame by frame to decipher Sidekick's AI core capabilities and shared our findings below. 

You can find the video here:

Now, let's take a look at the features!

A Quick Definition of Shopify Sidekick

Sidekick is an AI-powered commerce assistant, built to simplify the journey of launching, managing, and expanding your business on Shopify.

Developed as part of the cutting-edge technology of Shopify Magic, Sidekick is equipped with comprehensive knowledge of the Shopify platform, enabling it to access relevant data, context, and expertise to provide personalized and valuable assistance for various tasks. 

Engage in natural, everyday language conversations with Sidekick, as it becomes your creative catalyst, elevates your store's quality, handles time-consuming tasks, and aids in making intelligent business decisions. Let Sidekick empower you to achieve more with ease and efficiency as you navigate the world of online commerce.

1. Content Creation

Shopify Sidekick looks to be an invaluable ally for merchants when it comes to content creation, offering comprehensive support across various media formats.

Whether it's written content, images, videos, or audio, Sidekick is designed to enhance your creative endeavors and streamline the content creation process.

1. Written Content: Sidekick's AI-powered capabilities enable it to generate engaging and persuasive written content. Say goodbye to writer's block as Sidekick provides valuable suggestions and prompts to jump-start your writing process. From product descriptions and blog posts to email campaigns and social media captions, Sidekick ensures that your written content resonates with your audience and communicates your brand's message effectively.
2. Images: Visual content is essential in capturing the attention of potential customers. With Sidekick's assistance, you can access a vast library of high-quality images, or even receive recommendations on which images best align with your brand and products. Moreover, Sidekick can help you optimize your images for various platforms, ensuring that they appear professional and eye-catching.
3. Videos: Video content has become a powerful tool for storytelling and engagement. Shopify Sidekick assists you in creating captivating video content that showcases your products or brand. From editing guidance to script suggestions, Sidekick enables you to produce compelling videos that leave a lasting impact on your audience.
4. Audio: Podcasts and audio content are gaining popularity as a means of connecting with audiences in a more personal way. Sidekick can aid in conceptualizing podcast ideas, crafting scripts, and even recommending suitable background music to set the tone. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced podcaster, Sidekick offers valuable assistance to help your audio content stand out.

By harnessing the capabilities of Shopify Sidekick, merchants can enhance their content creation process and ensure that their written, visual, video, and audio content aligns with their brand identity and resonates with their target audience.

2. Repetitive Tasks, Workflows, and Research

Shopify Sidekick provides invaluable support in tackling repetitive tasks, streamlining tedious workflows, and conducting research with ease and efficiency. With its AI-powered capabilities, Sidekick is designed to alleviate the burden of time-consuming activities, allowing merchants to focus on more strategic aspects of their business.

1. Repetitive Tasks: Sidekick excels at handling repetitive tasks that can consume a significant amount of time and resources. From automating inventory management and order processing to handling customer inquiries and managing email campaigns, Sidekick's automation features help optimize daily operations and free up merchants' valuable time.
2. Tedious Workflows: In business, certain workflows can be inherently complex and tedious. With Sidekick, merchants can simplify these processes by using AI-driven solutions that streamline workflows, ensuring smoother operations and reducing the likelihood of errors. Whether it's managing product updates or handling data entry tasks, Sidekick is equipped to tackle these challenges efficiently.
3. Research Assistance: Research is a crucial aspect of running a successful business, but it can be time-consuming and overwhelming. Shopify Sidekick quickly gathers and analyzes data from various sources, providing merchants with valuable insights and information. Whether it's competitor analysis, market research, or trend tracking, Sidekick empowers merchants with the knowledge they need to make informed decisions.

By leveraging Shopify Sidekick, it appears that merchants can significantly enhance their productivity and focus on strategic growth initiatives.

With repetitive tasks automated, tedious workflows simplified, and research made more accessible, merchants can achieve a competitive edge and drive their businesses to new heights. Sidekick's AI-driven assistance is a game-changer for entrepreneurs, allowing them to maximize their potential and succeed in the ever-evolving world of ecommerce.

3. Pre-defined Actions

Upon opening Sidekick, you'll see an array of pre-defined tasks that you can ask Sidekick to complete. For instance:

• Create a discount
• Analyze store
• Edit theme

2. You Ask Sidekick Anything 

In the words of Tobias: ‘Every entrepreneur has tons of questions.’ So you might be pleased to hear that you're not limited to the pre-defined actions listed above. In fact, you can ask Sidekick anything. 

Let’s take the example in the screenshot below, for instance. Here you see the user asking Sidekick why their sales have dropped off from March.

Sidekick then populates an AI generated answer specific to your business:

With over four million online stores fuelled by Shopify, they've accumulated a lot of data, which we reckon makes Sidekick's AI-fuelled insights worthy of note.

3. Discounts

We mentioned discount creation above, but we love the look of this feature so much that it deserves its own section.

You can create any kind of discount, including applying a promotion to all your products. Sidekick can also tell you if you need to create a new collection for all your products before putting all items on sale.

As you can imagine, offloading laborious tasks like this to Sidekick will save you and your team tons of time that could be better spent elsewhere. 

4. Theme Edits

You can instruct the AI assistant to execute all kinds of edits. For example, let’s say you’ve just created a new collection that needs adding to your homepage. Sidekick could handle this for you. Likewise, you can get Sidekick to remove products from your storefront that you no longer sell. 

However, Sidekick's editing capabilities don't end there; you could even get it to modify your store's entire aesthetic!

5. Copyediting

Considering we've just said that SideKick can revamp your entire store's web design, you won't be surprised to hear that it can also update your copy. This comes in especially handy if you're changing your product catalog. 

We also like this for quick edits outside of the usual content creation talked about earlier in this article. Merchants can, for example, quickly modify the banner on a hero image with Sidekick.

They might also adjust buttons, headlines for sections, or the entire copy presented on the often countless landing pages you have linked to online ads. 

Shopify Magic

Shopify Sidekick is actually part of an entire AI suite provided for free by Shopify. We’ve mainly covered what’s available in the Sidekick portion of Shopify Magic, but it’s also worth mentioning the additional AI features that come alongside Sidekick. 

Those include: 

• Automatic Text Generation
• App Review Summaries

Automatic Text Generation

Merchants can accelerate their writing processes with Shopify Magic's automatic text generation feature. Powered by artificial intelligence (AI) technology, Shopify Magic utilizes the information you provide to offer valuable content suggestions for your online store, including product descriptions, email subject lines, and headings.

This innovative text generation relies on Large Language Models (LLMs), sophisticated computer programs specifically designed to comprehend human language. By analyzing vast volumes of text data from various sources like books, articles, and web pages, LLMs use statistical algorithms to grasp patterns and relationships between words and phrases. As a result, LLMs can perform an array of tasks, from answering questions and translating languages to summarizing text and generating original content. Here are some content examples you can produce:

1. Blog Posts: Craft compelling and engaging blog posts with the assistance of Shopify Magic's text generation.
2. Product Descriptions: Enhance your product descriptions and showcase your items in a captivating manner using the AI-generated content.
3. Shopify Email: Create impactful and persuasive email content effortlessly with the help of Shopify Magic.
4. Shopify Inbox: Manage and automate your inbox messages with AI-powered text suggestions.
5. Theme Editor: Customize your online store's appearance with text suggestions generated by Shopify Magic.

Incorporate Shopify Magic's automatic text generation across these sections of your store to streamline your writing process and optimize your content for better customer engagement and conversions. 

App Review Summaries

This feature from Shopify Magic lets you leverage the insights of fellow merchants through app reviews to make informed decisions about the right apps for your business. With Shopify Magic-powered app review summaries, conveniently available for select apps on the Shopify App Store, you can expedite the process of choosing the most suitable apps for your needs. Overall, the feature lets you benefit from the collective wisdom of other users to streamline your app selection.

How Shopify Sidekick Will Change Ecommerce Websites

It appears that everyone is cautiously excited about AI, so what should we expect in the future? What does Shopify Sidekick bring to merchants and customers, and how will that change the landscape of ecommerce? 

Combining Language Models and Merchant Business Data

Shopify Sidekick is built as a combination of large language models, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and proprietary Shopify data, which includes data from merchants. This shows us that ecommerce businesses should expect a sort of shared content system, where their data is utilized for an overall industry analysis. However, Shopify states that the conversations and data are never shared with third parties. 

This works to improve how all merchants create conversions and content, seeing as how you can immediately tap into language models and Shopify data to generate everything from blog posts to homepage content. This combination means that you receive well-written content (thanks to ChatGPT) that’s also fairly accurate and relevant (thanks to Shopify, industry data, and your own site’s data). 

For instance, Shopify Sidekick can: 

• Customize the tone of voice to match how your web content is across your website. 
• Generate relevant content for business milestones and holidays. 
• Translate content into multiple languages, especially for those countries you actually sell to. 
• Create relevant emails and marketing campaigns with just a few prompt words. 

Human-controlled review

We expect to see this type of oversight well into the future, since it’s quite nerve-racking for business owners to entrust the voice of their business to a language learning model (or as most people probably see it: a faceless robot). 

Shopify Magic, and Shopify Sidekick, offer merchants the chance to review everything that the language learning models produce. If they make an email for you, it doesn’t get sent out until you complete a review and hit Send. 

This type of review system is in response to how learning language models are known to be occasionally inaccurate, especially when it comes to current events and experience-based content. There are even concerns about ChatGPT creating toxic or biased content. We’re certain this will continue to be an issue into the future, so we also tend to think that human review features will remain. 

There’s no completely automated AI. Humans must still click the Publish or Send buttons. And it’s recommended you review the content before doing that. 

Technical Guidance and Shop Analysis

Gone are the days of pouring through an ecommerce platform’s knowledgebase to find a simple answer. If you can’t figure out how to generate a sales report, Sidekick does it for you. If you’d like to add a discount coupon—and can’t find the right area to do so—a simple question to Sidekick brings you there. You can even ask Sidekick to make the coupon for you, using data from your store to produce something that’s appropriate. 

We figure this type of assistance will continue well into the future for the vast majority of ecommerce platforms. Not only that, but you’ll be able to turn to AI systems to analyze sales trends and past data for you. Sidekick, for example, has the ability to perform basic product research, summarize sales documents, and create optimized marketing campaigns. 

Web Design by AI

We shouldn’t forget about web design itself. Language learning models have delved deep into the realm of web design, allowing developers to generate fast code and website settings. 

Tools like Shopify Sidekick have changed, and will continue to change the landscape of web design for ecommerce merchants. 

All that’s required is for you to open Shopify Sidekick and ask it to modify the theme colors of your website; or to add a hero image on your homepage; or to change the global typography to match something more whimsical and fun. 

It’s still wise to review every design proposition made by Shopify Sidekick, but it’s nice to know that these types of AI tools don’t randomly pick colors and fonts and design placements. Instead, they tap into your past design behaviors, and utilize what’s common in the industry, to ensure the design decisions match your brand. 

FAQs on Shopify Sidekick

Here are some questions and answers that help you understand Sidekick a little better. We explain how to get access to Sidekick, along with essentials like pricing, mobile access, and data security. 

How do you gain access to Sidekick? 

Shopify is releasing Sidekick to select merchants who apply. You can apply on this page, and wait to see if you’re accepted. We expect Sidekick to roll out the same way most Shopify products do: with a limited release, then to all US merchants, then potentially worldwide. 

How much does Shopify Sidekick cost?

Every Shopify merchants will have access to Shopify Magic and Shopify Sidekick. It doesn’t matter what plan you have. However, Shopify emphasizes that your Shopify plan could affect the types of features you receive from Sidekick. It appears that hasn’t been figured out yet. 

Which types of media can I produce with Shopify Sidekick? 

The artificial intelligence tool is capable of generating: 

• Conversations
• Text blocks
• Stories
• Audio
• Images
• Videos

All of that is possible after a human prompt. 

Is my site data secure with Shopify Sidekick?

We can’t speak to the overall security of language learning models in general, but Shopify has stated that all Shopify Magic tools—including Shopify Sidekick—are built on Shopify’s trusted privacy policy and robust security architecture. This should protect all data, conversations, and content sent through the Sidekick module. This includes conversations with customers, and those with the merchant and Sidekick. 

How does Shopify Sidekick get its data?

Shopify Sidekick obtains its data from: 

• Your store’s purchase patterns
• Anonymized customer interactions
• Store performance

All of that is securely processed, then used for things like: 

• Automations
• Actionable insights
• Personalized recommendations

Is Sidekick available on mobile devices?

As of this article, not really. Early access to Sidekick won’t provide support for mobile devices. It sounds like Shopify intends to implement mobile interactions with Sidekick, but many features from Sidekick and Shopify Magic are not optimized for mobile devices just yet. 

Does Shopify Sidekick support the languages needed for my store? 

All features from Sidekick, and Shopify Magic, support the English language. Other features offer support for Chinese (Simplified), Portuguese (Brazilian), Japanese, French, Spanish, and German.