Shopify Revolutionizes E-commerce with AI-Powered Store Builder and Enhanced Developer Tools

Shopify launches an AI-powered store builder as part of its latest update | TechCrunch

Shopify is giving its merchants a slew of new AI-powered tools designed to help them enhance the online shopping experience for their customers. This includes an AI store builder for users to set up storefronts using a single prompt, as well as an AI generator for creating elements (such as banners) without knowing how to code. The platform also upgraded Sidekick, its AI commerce assistant, with new voice chat and screen sharing capabilities. These updates were announced on Wednesday during Shopify's Edition launch day, the company's biannual announcement that showcases recent changes to the platform. The goal of the AI store builder is to create the foundation of a website quickly, so there's more time for personalization. To use the tool, users first have to enter a prompt that describes their brand. For example, "tennis gear and stylish athleisure." Shopify's AI then generates a ready-to-launch storefront, and merchants can then manually customize their store within the editor. Shopify also introduced a new public theme called "Horizon" in its Theme Store, a marketplace for downloading pre-designed templates. Horizon includes a built-in AI to assist merchants in adjusting their designs as they wish. It's also the first theme to include "Theme Blocks," which are essentially building blocks that merchants can use to customize how their online store looks without touching any code. These theme blocks can also be further customized with the help of AI. For example, if the merchant wants a banner with text and an animation, they can describe it or share an image for inspiration, and it generates the code for them to copy into the editor. They can also generate images. Additionally, users can now engage in voice chat with Sidekick, which responds audibly to questions. For example, if merchants are confused about tariffs -- a hot topic for retailers right now -- Sidekick will direct them to a tariff guide that provides U.S. rates for different types of products. Users can also screen share with Sidekick to navigate features, such as finding the settings. Alongside these new capabilities, Sidekick is now available in the Shopify mobile app. Sidekick was rolled out widely to all merchants in December 2024. According to the company, monthly users have more than doubled since the beginning of 2025, a spokesperson told TechCrunch. Shopify's continued investment in AI shouldn't be unexpected. In CEO Tobi Lütke's recent memo to staff, he suggested that AI may help the company maintain a smaller workforce.

Shopify launches AI tool that builds complete online stores from keywords

May 21 (Reuters) - Shopify (SHOP.TO), opens new tab, on Wednesday rolled out a generative artificial intelligence feature that would allow merchants on its e-commerce platform to set up their online stores by entering descriptive keywords. The "AI Store Builder" generates three store layouts, complete with images and text, based on the keywords, helping sellers significantly reduce the time and resources required to design their store website. While Shopify has offered various AI-based tools and third-party applications to assist merchants in building their stores, the AI Store Builder is the first integrated feature that fully automates the website setup process. "Instead of just having a merchant click and drag and fill out text fields on how they want their site to look - which can be really daunting for some - we thought why not ask them more open-ended questions and set up their store in the best likeness we can imagine, using AI," said Vanessa Lee, vice president of product at Shopify. Shopify has bet heavily on AI products to draw more merchants to its platform, offering tools that range from image generation to inventory management. Reporting by Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Editing by Tasim Zahid Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Suggested Topics:Artificial Intelligence

Shopify Introduces Vibe Coding, Teams Up With Perplexity for AI Shopping | AIM

"We want building on Shopify to be the most modern, simple, LLM-pilled experience possible for the next generation of developers." Shopify on Wednesday announced a slew of updates as part of its Summer '25 edition. The upgrade includes new AI-powered tools, a faster development workflow, and a partnership with Perplexity. The update positions Shopify as a more open, assistive platform for building both apps and conversational storefronts. At the core of the launch is a next-gen development platform that simplifies everything from writing backend logic to previewing apps instantly. Developers can now code locally, define data using simple TOML files, and deploy across all Shopify plans -- including Plus -- without extra setup. One can also choose to preview the app without needing to deploy it. As the company mentions, all of this was facilitated by .dev Assistant. "We want building on Shopify to be the most modern, simple, LLM-pilled experience possible for the next generation of developers," Eytan Seidman, director of product at Shopify, said. "Every week, it seems like coding is changing in new ways, and so we're making Shopify the most productive platform that embraces building new things in new ways with cutting-edge tools." The update also introduces Shopify Catalogue, a structured index of merchant product data built for AI use. It allows apps and agents to search millions of listings and surface relevant products on any interface. Perplexity is among the first partners to plug into this pipeline. "Assistive experiences are the future of commerce," said Taz Patel, head of advertising and shopping at Perplexity, pointing to the value of structured, real-time data in conversational search. The company mentions that Shopify's Storefront MCP enables the creation of AI shopping agents tailored for specific brands. These agents can conduct product searches, answer inquiries, manage shopping carts, and process checkouts instantly with secure access to the catalogue and store data. On the front end, Shopify is making commerce composable with Web Components that drop into any website with just a few lines of HTML and no full-stack experience required. The company is also rolling out Horizon, a new AI-integrated theme foundation, alongside tools like .dev Assistant and a CLI that cuts down deployment to a single command and enables personalisation.OpenAI was also reportedly looking to Integrate Shopify with ChatGPT for shopping. This signals a rise in AI-powered shopping experience.

You Can Now Design an Online Store in Seconds

Shopify on Wednesday rolled out a generative artificial intelligence feature that would allow merchants on its e-commerce platform to set up their online stores by entering descriptive keywords. The "AI Store Builder" generates three store layouts, complete with images and text, based on the keywords, helping sellers significantly reduce the time and resources required to design their store website. While Shopify has offered various AI-based tools and third-party applications to assist merchants in building their stores, the AI Store Builder is the first integrated feature that fully automates the website setup process. "Instead of just having a merchant click and drag and fill out text fields on how they want their site to look -- which can be really daunting for some -- we thought why not ask them more open-ended questions and set up their store in the best likeness we can imagine, using AI," said Vanessa Lee, vice president of product at Shopify.

Shopify Debuts AI-Powered Store Builder for Merchants | PYMNTS.com

Shopify has introduced a tool that lets merchants create online stores by entering descriptive keywords. The Canadian eCommerce platform's "AI Store Builder" was announced Wednesday (May 21) along with a series of other new features. This offering uses artificial intelligence (AI) to generate store layouts with text and images using merchant-provided keywords, helping them cut back on the time and resources it takes to design their store website. "Merchants can now translate a vision they have for their online store into something real much faster and without needing to code," Vanessa Lee, Shopify's vice president of product, said in a news release. "As with everything we do here, we want to make the complicated easy so entrepreneurs can focus on what truly matters: growing their business and connecting with their customers." The company has also redesigned its POS (point of sale) app to include smoother navigation and a smarter search feature, as well as a feature called "ship and carry out." This offering "lets customers leave with what's in stock, the rest is shipped -- no awkward juggling," the company said. Last month, CEO Tobias Lütke issued a memo to employees saying the company now considers AI use among its workers a "baseline expectation." He argued the technology is critical at a time when merchants and entrepreneurs are leveraging it, and that Shopify must make its software the best platform on which those sellers can develop their businesses, "We do this by keeping everyone cutting edge and bringing all the best tools to bear so our merchants can be more successful than they themselves used to imagine," he said. "For that we need to be absolutely ahead." Lütke added that he is using AI all the time and that he invited employees to experiment with the technology last summer, but that his statement then was "too much of a suggestion." Meanwhile, PYMNTS wrote earlier this week about the potential of agentic AI in eCommerce, allowing retailers to compress browsing, selection and checkout into the same dialogue. That shift is being driven, the report added, by software agents that can both fetch information and take actions on a shopper's behalf, like adding items to carts to making payments. "What consumers really want is for commerce to happen immediately," Scott Hendrickson, chief revenue officer of the agentic AI merchant network firmly, said in an interview with PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster. "People's time has never been more valuable, and they expect things to be frictionless."

Shopify doubles down on AI with tools to create online stores, shopping assistants

Shopify Inc.'s latest round of product developments are leaning on artificial intelligence to help merchants and developers create everything from online stores to shopping assistants. The technology figures into many of the 150 product launches or enhancements the e-commerce software company announced Wednesday through its semi-annual Editions showcase. Shopify said the updates are part of a "broader shift" it's making toward "declarative commerce, where business owners simply express their goals, and AI handles the rest, freeing entrepreneurs to focus on creativity and growth rather than technical complexity." Some of the buzziest changes target Sidekick, a tool it debuted in 2023 for some merchant customers to ask questions about their business operations. With the chatbot now equipped with advanced reasoning capabilities, Shopify's vice-president of product Vanessa Lee says merchants can turn to Sidekick with more practical questions like, "My sales dropped last month -- what caused that?" Sidekick will then trawl through the store's analytics, including sales figures, order history, product performance and customer purchase patterns. From there, it will calculate things like sales declines and revenue comparisons over specific time frames and can offer breakdowns based on specific geographies, customer segments or sales channels. Lee said the idea is to produce data that points to exactly what is going wrong, so merchants can determine how to turn things around. If the merchant thinks discounts or marketing campaigns is the answer, Sidekick can guide them through the process. If they want to sell across borders or target new customer segments, the tool is capable of setting them up for that as well. Sidekick, which is being upgraded to support voice chat and screen sharing, can also come in handy when merchants need art. The tool now has image generation capabilities, allowing users to type in a description of a photo they want to create and within moments, be sent that image back. In addition to Sidekick, Shopify is also deploying AI within its other software, so merchants can input a few descriptive keywords to instantly design online stores and all the images and text that go with them. Developers, who make their money selling tools that plug into Shopify's software, will also see a boost from AI. They will now be able to develop AI-powered shopping assistants with real-time access to Shopify data. The capability is being built on Anthropic's Model Context Protocol, an open standard for connecting AI assistants to the systems where data lives. In Shopify's case, developers will be able to use third-party AI agents to seamlessly search product catalogs, manage carts, access customer orders and retrieve accurate store policies, to personalize conversations assistants have with customers. The AI updates come a month after Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke told staff AI is a "fundamental expectation" for all employees and will be embedded into everything from performance reviews to product development. Away from AI, Shopify said it has redesigned its point-of-sale app to make workflows more intuitive and upgraded its payments platform so merchants can use a single store to sell from multiple business entities globally. The payments update removes the burden of duplicative admin systems and will help merchants accept more than 130 currencies and settle in up to eight, so they can minimize foreign exchange fees on payouts, refunds, chargebacks and supplier payments.

Shopify introduces AI features in Summer '25 Edition for simplified merchant experience By Investing.com

Investing.com -- Shopify (NASDAQ:SHOP) has launched its Summer '25 Edition, introducing over 150 upgrades aimed at enabling merchants to build better experiences with ease and creativity. The new features span across all areas of Shopify, reducing technical challenges and allowing more time for brand building. The Summer '25 Edition introduces Horizon, a theme foundation that combines beauty and flexibility. Horizon allows merchants to create and customize a stunning storefront with preset designs or from scratch. The intuitive Theme Blocks feature enables the easy creation and customization of shops, without the need for coding. A built-in AI generates custom content blocks based on the merchant's description, providing a unique and personalized shop design. The AI Store Builder, another new feature, crafts custom designs based on a description of the brand. This feature is useful for both new and existing shops, allowing merchants to focus on the final touches of their shop rather than starting from a blank canvas. Ben Attwood, founder of Clubhouse Skin, believes the Horizon feature would have saved him both time and money during his brand's launch. Shopify has also redesigned its Point of Sale (POS) app to be more intuitive and responsive, with a focus on speed and brand energy. The app now includes features such as smoother navigation, smarter search, and a "ship and carry out" option. The Display Editor allows for intentional placement of brand logos and colors, and the Tap to Pay feature transforms phones into payment terminals. The Shop app has been transformed into a more personalized discovery experience, with a dynamic feed that adapts in real time as buyers browse and search. The app now allows buyers to build, share, and collaborate on collections, and product variants are displayed as visual swatches, matching the store's presentation. Shopify has made going global easier by allowing merchants to sell from multiple entities in one store, consolidating all businesses and legal structures into one admin. Shopify Payments has also expanded to more countries, including Mexico and 15 new markets in Europe. In response to the rising popularity of AI shopping assistants, Shopify is launching the Knowledge Base app. This allows merchants to optimize the answers buyers receive about their store, controlling the exact facts shared directly with AI shopping agents about their brand. Sidekick, another feature, has been upgraded to solve more complex problems, connecting more data and performing deeper analysis to uncover useful insights. It now supports 20 languages and allows questions to be asked via voice or chat. Klavs Steenhof, head of digital at INTERSPORT Group, finds the upgraded Sidekick effective in inventory management. He believes that businesses that embrace AI across their operations will thrive, and appreciates Shopify's seamless integration of this technology. The Summer '25 Edition of Shopify is designed to make the entrepreneurial process easier, faster, and more creative for merchants.