Shopify's AI-powered commerce assistant Sidekick has entered a phase of
advanced multistep reasoning that also supports image generation.
Sidekick now can answer more complex questions and requests. Reporting identifies underlying causes of business
challenges, recommends preventative strategies, and delivers executable multistep solutions.
The reason for sales declines are no longer hidden in a black box. Sidekick can help explore
potential reasons by reviewing inventory, marketing efforts, and customer behavior patterns, and then offer suggestions to get campaigns or sales back on track.
Matt Koenig, Shopify
product lead, called Sidekick a virtual co-founder mainly used to identify growth opportunities that merchants might otherwise miss. The AI assistant eliminates tedious tasks so
merchants can focus on growth and building connections.
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The update aligns with Shopify's vision of building a "declarative" commerce approach, where merchants express goals
and the system charts the optimal path forward.
The advanced technical framework supports analysis from multiple sources and pulls data from sales metrics, inventory, and customer profiles
simultaneously for holistic insights.
Data is sourced from publicly available datasets and Shopify’s own
databases. Sidekick is trained to know all of Shopify and is designed to operate within the context of a specific merchant's shop. The company beleives its has become a resource for
information, with context and guidance a business needs to make good decisions and resolve tasks.
Segmentation capabilities back syntax improvements enable more nuanced
customer categorization, allowing merchants to target specific audiences with unprecedented precision.
The reasoning features has continuous self-correcting and refining responses through
contextual learning from each interaction.
Sidekick is designed as an AI assistant that helps merchants analyze business data, enhance product descriptions, automate
tasks, and make better decisions.
The upgrade also includes image generation, allowing merchants to create imagery directly through Sidekick.