If you run a Shopify store, you probably already have more AI than you use. The platform has been adding it almost everywhere, and much of it comes with your plan at no extra cost.

The trouble is that it's spread around the admin and each tool does something different. A simple way to sort it out is to ask who each one helps: you, while you run the store; your customer, once they're in it; or your customer before they arrive, while they're asking an AI assistant.

For you: the tools that save you work

Shopify Magic is Shopify's name for the AI features across the admin. According to its Help Center, it's free on every plan. It can draft product descriptions, page copy and email subject lines, remove photo backgrounds and create banners.

It's handy for getting started, with one caveat Shopify itself puts in writing: you're responsible for the accuracy of whatever you publish. A generated description reads well, but the AI doesn't know what you haven't told it. If you don't give it the measurements or the material, they won't be there, or they'll be wrong.

Sidekick is the assistant in your admin. You write to it as you would to a colleague ("which products sold worst this month?", "set up a 10% discount on this collection") and it answers from your data or does the job. It comes with your plan, though features and usage limits vary by plan, and it works in your store's language.

Both save you time, but your customers never talk to them: at most, they see the copy the tools helped you write.

For your customer, inside your store

Here, Shopify's AI shows up in two places.

The first is search. Shopify includes semantic search, which understands what a search means rather than just matching exact words: someone typing "gift for a runner" can find trainers even if no product page mentions a gift. But there are conditions: your store has to be on the Grow, Advanced or Plus plan and have fewer than 200,000 products, and it doesn't apply to the suggestions that appear as the shopper types. If you want to know what it really changes, I cover it in what semantic search is.

The second is Shopify Inbox chat. You can set up instant answers to common questions, and Shopify Magic can suggest those answers for you. The catch is that the suggestions are based on your store policies (shipping, returns, privacy), not on your products, and for now they're only generated in English.

So inside your store, Shopify handles two things well: helping people find products and answering general questions about delivery or returns. Where it does less is the conversation about the product itself: whether that size will fit, which of two models suits them, whether it will do what they need. And those are the questions that, left unanswered, hold back a lot of sales.

For your customer, before they reach your store

The biggest change this year happens away from your site. With Agentic Storefronts, Shopify lists your products in AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Copilot, Google's AI Mode, Gemini and Meta, so people can find them when they ask there.

According to Shopify, it's on by default for eligible stores and you manage it under Sales channels, in the Agentic section of your admin. To be eligible you need a paid plan, a storefront that's open to the public and completed store policies. On top of that, each product needs a title, at least one image, a price and shipping to the US or Canada.

That last point matters if you only sell in the UK or Europe: if you don't ship to the US or Canada, your products don't qualify. If you do, ChatGPT and Copilot work wherever your store is based, but Google's AI Mode and Gemini are, for now, only for US stores selling to US customers. For the wider picture, see what agentic commerce is.

Where to start

If you're only going to do three things, I'd do them in this order:

  1. Complete your product pages. Everything above depends on them: search, generated copy and AI assistants. Measurements, materials, who it's for and who it isn't for. How to prepare your catalogue for AI has a practical checklist.
  2. Complete your store policies. They feed the Inbox answers and they're a requirement for appearing in AI assistants. Half an hour's work that covers both.
  3. Check what people search for in your store. What they look for and don't find tells you what's missing from your catalogue, or what your customers call things.

That leaves the part Shopify doesn't handle automatically: answering a customer who's unsure about a particular product straight away, without you having to be on the other end of the chat. That's what add-on shopping assistants such as SmartShop AI for Shopify are for. They read your catalogue, answer with your products and know which sizes and colours are left.

You don't need to use everything at once. But if your store is on Shopify, the cheapest step and the one that pays off most are the same: getting your product data right. Everything else works better on top of it.