Sidekick: What exactly can your Shopify smart assistant do?

Since its launch in 2025, Shopify AI Sidekick has become a hot topic in the global e-commerce industry. This feature is more than just a chatbot; it's an AI-powered operational partner that truly understands your store's data and can assist in decision-making. This article will provide a general overview of what it can do, how to apply it, and a practical test to see if it delivers.

For small and medium-sized e-commerce brands in Taiwan, this means that marketing, operations, customer service, and decision-making can all be made intelligent and automated by AI.

🌟 What is Shopify AI Sidekick?

AI Sidekick is Shopify's built-in intelligent assistant that integrates generative AI, natural language analytics, and store backend data.

Simply put, it's a chat interface in your Shopify admin panel that "understands e-commerce and understands your store".

Merchants can ask questions or give instructions using natural language, for example:

• "Could you please help me analyze which product sold best over the past week?"

• Based on the current inventory, which product should I set up a promotional campaign for?

• "Help me write an email to promote our new fall products."

• "Generate a 10% discount coupon, available only to new customers."

AI Sidekick not only understands these requests, but also directly executes related operations, generates reports, and even calls Shopify Flow or Functions to complete automated tasks.

🧭 What can it do? — Real-world application scenarios

1. Product management Marketing activities, store settings

Sidekick helps you quickly create and edit products, including adding product descriptions, setting prices, uploading images, and optimizing SEO settings. Create discount codes, set up promotional activities, and filter target customer groups. Just tell them... Sidekick can help you accomplish these tasks and save you a lot of time by meeting your needs.

From customizing your domain and setting up payment methods to adjusting shipping costs, Sidekick can guide you through all the setup steps for your store. I can also help you optimize your store's SEO, allowing more potential customers to find you.

💡Assistance to Taiwanese businesses : In my testing, after generating the product and clicking preview, it can automatically create products, discount codes, and articles. It can also directly update content for SEO optimization. However, product descriptions and articles require more detailed instructions to meet the needs.

2. Intelligent data analysis and decision-making recommendations

AI Sidekick can instantly read your business data (order volume, visitor sources, conversion rate, popular products, etc.) and provide insightful reports in simple language.

For example: "Your average order value has decreased by 8% compared to last week, which may be related to the end of the free shipping promotion. We recommend reactivating the Free Shipping feature."

💡Benefits for Taiwanese businesses : Many small and medium-sized brands lack data analysts. Sidekick can replace tedious report reading and quickly provide actionable suggestions. Shopiify's native analytics data is already comprehensive, and real-world testing shows it can quickly highlight key points, reducing the time spent reading materials.

3. Automatically generate marketing content

Sidekick can automatically write social media posts, newsletter copy, ad descriptions, and SEO headlines based on your product information and brand tone.

For example: "Help me write an Instagram post to promote my new handmade scented candle collection."

💡Benefits for Taiwanese businesses : Reduces outsourced copywriting and marketing costs, especially suitable for small teams without dedicated marketing personnel. Real-world testing shows that the automatic generation of marketing copy is very fast; instructions can be more detailed, specifying style requirements, etc., but it's not particularly outstanding compared to other AI-generated articles.

4. Automated store operations

Sidekick can directly call Shopify Functions or Flow to automatically create discounts, update inventory, and adjust shipping terms.

For example: "Automatically send a notification to replenish stock when inventory falls below 10 units" or "Add a Mother's Day 20% off promotion scheduled to end on May 12".

💡Benefits for Taiwanese merchants : Eliminates the need to navigate through multiple layers of backend settings pages, saving operation time and reducing human error. Actual testing shows this is not the original. Shopify's features will recommend using paid apps first. You need to provide instructions to them to set up low inventory alerts using Flow. They will provide steps for you to follow, but you still need to understand the basics of Flow.

5. AI customer service interacts with customers.

Future versions of Sidekick could be integrated into customer service centers (such as Inbox or Shopify Chat) to help automatically answer common customer questions and even provide dynamic information based on orders.

For example: "Please help customer A check the shipping status of order #1023."

💡Benefits for Taiwanese merchants : Real-time customer service eliminates the need for 24/7 human support, making it especially suitable for individuals or families running e-commerce businesses. Hope it launches soon!

6. Teaching and Guidance Support

Sidekick can also act as an "instant Q&A" mentor, helping you understand Shopify settings, theme editing, or app usage. It can immediately navigate you to the right page or provide detailed instructions.

For example: "How can I add a video section to a product page?"

It will guide you step-by-step on how to modify section or liquid code within a scene theme.

💡Helpful for Taiwanese businesses : Eliminates the need to search for English documents or seek help from social media, improving self-learning efficiency. It's been tested and proven quite useful. Sometimes when I suddenly forget a function, asking it helps, but sometimes I can't find the place it points to. After contacting it two or three times, I can usually find the destination. Modifying sections or liquid code is only possible in minor ways. For more complex features, it's recommended to use the app or consult an expert. It's not advisable for general users to modify these parts themselves, as it can easily cause problems with the theme. If you need to add blocks, using AI Store Builder is more practical.

🔍 Integration with the Shopify ecosystem

AI Sidekick is not an isolated feature, but rather integrated into Shopify's entire ecosystem:

• Integrate with Shopify Flow → Enable automation of smart condition-triggered events.

• Integration with Shopify Functions → Dynamically adjust discount, shipping, and payment rules.

• Sync with Shopify Analytics → Get real-time revenue and customer behavior insights.

• Interoperability with the App Store → Can recommend suitable apps to supplement merchants' needs.

This means that Sidekick doesn't replace human labor, but rather "fully automates" e-commerce decision-making and operational processes. Simply put, Sidekick is like your on-call store assistant, ready to help you handle various tasks so you can focus on what matters most—growing your business.

🧠 Summary: AI Assistant = Your "Co-Manager of the Store"

AI Sidekick represents Shopify's next phase—moving from a tool platform to a "smart partner".

It allows merchants to go beyond just operating the interface; it enables them to interact, think, and act with AI.

For Taiwanese e-commerce companies, this is not only about saving manpower, but also about enhancing their competitiveness.

When you can analyze, market, and execute faster than your competitors, AI Sidekick becomes more than just an assistant; it becomes your "co-manager of the store."