Shopify is dropping new AI tools at Edition, with an eye on flexibility and customization

Shopify is expanding its AI ecosystem—moving beyond the basics like using AI for content generation—with new AI tools and upgrades to better support merchants throughout their journey.

This new AI strategy begins with the launch of Horizon, Shopifyʼs new theme architecture that comes with built-in AI, and controls how an online Shopify store looks and feels. Plus, there is a new AI Store Builder that will take keyword prompts within Horizon to create a new store design for sellers quickly. Shopify is also releasing a new Knowledge Base App or Shopifyʼs version of a backend support box for sellers to use when they are working with agentic AI assistants. These tools are launching for merchants on Wednesday as part of Shopifyʼs “Edition” release, a biannual showcase of product launches and improvements from the past six months.

Sidekick, Shopifyʼs AI-powered conversational consultant for merchants, also gets a big step up with voice chat and screen share functionality, enabling merchants to interact with the platform using voice commands.

Overall, Shopify’s new AI tools suggest the tech giant is aiming to reduce the overall cost of running an e-commerce store at a time when potential recession risks and tariffs are pressuring merchants to raise prices, Mark William Lewis, founder of e-commerce agency Netalico, which helps brands set up on Shopify, told Retail Brew. “The focus is on eliminating those cost barriers and making it simpler and easier to run your Shopify store,” Lewis said.

“We’re already in a post-AI version of Shopify,” Vanessa Lee, VP of product who oversees Shopifyʼs AI efforts, told Retail Brew.

At a high level, Shopify said it is not approaching AI in a cookie-cutter way. “AI should be infused in every part of the merchant journey not just at the beginning, and not just for people who are just getting started,” Lee said.

Shopifyʼs Horizon, she said, makes it “way more flexible” for merchants to fix things like store headers, images, and text, taking the cost to employ a third-party developer out of the equation: “In the past, you would have to either talk to a developer or youʼd have to fiddle around with a lot of constraints with whatever the theme provided for you.”

Shopify changed its theme architecture four years ago with Dawn, which it released in 2021. Dawn was introduced alongside Online Store 2.0, marking a significant update to Shopifyʼs theme architecture at the time.

Shopify tool Sidekick, in particular, Lee said, has gotten way more powerful in the last three months with its voice and screen share functionality: “We gave Sidekick sight and voice, essentially, and the ability to hear you. So itʼs able to provide…a real-time feedback loop.”

Lee reported that Sidekick has more than doubled its weekly active retention rates, meaning merchants are returning to use the feature twice as frequently compared to January.

For Lewis, the Sidekick update really stood out among everything else because it’s the closest thing to replacing a person who would get on a call to guide merchants.

Regarding the knowledge base app, Lewis said Shopify is bracing for shopping via agentic AI shopping assistants. “In the future, a lot of people are going to shop through something like ChatGPT or Claude,” he said. “The knowledge base app will help [merchants] create hints for those AI shopping agents.”

So far, Shopify has cast a wider net when it comes to AI, Lewis said. “Itʼs almost a shotgun approach right now. I think they’re trying to put AI into everything, and they’ll see what sticks, and what doesnʼt,” he said.

Lewis went on to say that all these new Shopify upgrades are potential threats to independent agencies and the developer ecosystem. “But I don't think Shopify thinks of it that way, and I don’t think that is their motivation,” he said. “It’s just more like they’ve always had a mindset of: Make it as easy as possible for a normal human, like a marketing person, to operate the platform.”

Ultimately, Lewis said, as with any Shopify launch, one will have to take a wait-and-see approach: “Until it really gets into merchants’ hands, I donʼt think you can know how useful it will be for them.”