SHOPIFY IS PREPARING FOR AI SHOPPING AGENTS TO CHANGE EVERYTHING

Summary from the TLDR Marketing newsletter

Shopify believes that AI agents will act as merit-based personal shoppers, surfacing products based on individual preferences rather than retailer dominance in search results. It is building an AI merchant assistant called Sidekick alongside a support agent and a protocol for agents to read merchant product data. With only 18% of US retail purchases happening online, the company sees agentic commerce as a major discovery channel especially for smaller and long-tail merchants.