• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, Yesterday

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. 

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. 

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.