What is Shopify AI called? A complete guide to Shopify Magic

If you’re running a Shopify store, you’ve probably seen the term "AI" popping up everywhere. It’s supposed to automate tedious tasks, write amazing product descriptions, and maybe even act as a 24/7 assistant. But with all the different names and features flying around, it’s easy to get a little lost. You might just be wondering, "What is Shopify AI called, and what can it actually do for my business?"

Let’s cut through the noise. This guide will give you a straightforward look at Shopify’s AI tools. We’ll break down the core features, see how they work in the real world, talk about pricing, and cover the limitations so you can decide if it’s the right move for your store.

What is Shopify AI called?

Shopify’s collection of artificial intelligence tools goes by the official name of Shopify Magic. It isn’t a single app you install, but rather a bunch of AI-powered features built right into the Shopify platform you already use. Think of it as an AI engine that’s woven into your daily workflows, helping with everything from creating content to managing your store.

Within the Shopify Magic umbrella, the feature you’ll hear about most is Sidekick. This is your AI-powered commerce assistant. Sidekick acts like a conversational expert you can chat with to get business insights, carry out tasks, and get recommendations based on your store’s data.

So, while the main name is Shopify Magic, you’ll often be using its powers through Sidekick or by clicking specific AI buttons inside your admin dashboard, like when you need to write a product description or whip up some email copy. It’s all designed to feel like a built-in assistant that helps you get things done more efficiently.

Key features of Shopify Magic for merchants

Alright, let’s get into the specifics. Here’s a breakdown of what Shopify’s AI can do for your store, split into three main areas.

Building your storefront and creating content

We all know one of the most time-consuming parts of running an online store is creating content and designing the storefront. Shopify Magic is aimed squarely at cutting down that effort.

For new merchants, the AI-powered store builder is a huge help. You can enter a simple prompt describing your brand (like, "stylish and sustainable tennis gear"), and the AI will generate a storefront that’s pretty much ready to go. It gives you a solid starting point that you can then tweak and customize, saving you hours of setup time.

Then there’s the automated text generation. Shopify Magic can write compelling, SEO-friendly copy for different parts of your store.

• Product descriptions: Just feed it a few keywords or features, and the AI produces a polished description. This is incredibly useful if you have a large catalog of products.

• Blog posts and pages: You can give it a topic and a desired tone ("Expert," "Playful," etc.), and the AI will draft an entire article for you. It’s a great way to get a head start on your content marketing.

• Theme content: The AI can also write headlines and other short bits of copy directly inside the theme editor, which is handy for quick updates.

High-quality product photos are non-negotiable, and Shopify Magic has tools for AI-driven image editing to help you out without needing fancy software. You can remove or generate new backgrounds with a click, making sure all your product shots look professional and consistent.

And for those who want a bit more customization without diving into code, the AI can generate custom theme blocks. You can describe what you want (e.g., "a banner with a countdown timer and a ‘Shop Now’ button"), and the AI will create the Liquid code for you.

Automating marketing and customer engagement

Once your store is built, you need to bring in customers. Shopify Magic has features to help you market smarter and keep shoppers happy.

The AI can help with your email marketing campaigns by generating optimized subject lines and body content. It can even suggest the best times to send your campaigns based on your store’s data, hopefully giving your open rates a nice little boost.

When it comes to customer support, Shopify Magic powers the chat features in Shopify Inbox. It can generate personalized responses to common questions, which lets you reply faster and turn more of those live chats into sales. You can also use it to create instant answers for your FAQs.

Sidekick can also help you create custom customer segments using plain English. For example, you could ask it to "create a segment of customers who bought something more than twice in the last six months but haven’t bought in the last 30 days." This makes it much easier to build targeted marketing campaigns without fiddling with complex filters.

One last handy feature: when you’re browsing the Shopify App Store, the AI can summarize hundreds of app reviews for you. It gives you the key takeaways so you can make faster, more informed decisions about which apps to install.

Now, the built-in chat is useful for basic questions, but it’s important to know its limits. It can’t connect to external knowledge sources where you might keep important company info, like Google Docs or Confluence. For businesses that need a more powerful support bot, a tool like the AI chatbot from eesel AI can be embedded on your Shopify store. It provides 24/7 support by training on all your company knowledge and can escalate the tricky issues straight to your helpdesk.

Improving business operations and analytics

Shopify’s AI assistant, Sidekick, is designed to be your go-to for making smarter business decisions without having to dig through a mountain of reports.

You can ask Sidekick questions in plain English, like, "What were my best-selling products last month?" or "Show me my conversion rate trend for the last quarter." It pulls and analyzes your store’s data in real-time to give you answers, and sometimes even charts and graphs.

Sidekick can also perform tasks for you. For instance, you could tell it to "create a 15% discount for all items in the summer collection," and it will set up the promotion for you to quickly review and approve. It helps turn insights into action without a ton of clicking around.

The AI can also analyze trends to offer proactive advice. It might point out a product with declining sales and suggest a marketing campaign, or help forecast inventory needs to avoid running out of stock.

Limitations to consider

Shopify Magic sounds great, but it’s not perfect. There are a few key limitations you should be aware of, especially if you’re planning to grow.

1. It’s a closed ecosystem. Shopify AI works amazingly well with data inside Shopify. But it can’t connect to external knowledge sources where your team might store important info, like in Confluence, Google Docs, or Notion. This means your AI can’t answer questions using your internal wikis or standard operating procedures.

2. Limited helpdesk integration. The AI is built to work with Shopify’s own tools, like Inbox. If your support team uses a dedicated helpdesk like Zendesk, Freshdesk, or Gorgias, Shopify’s AI can’t really operate inside it to help automate tickets or draft replies for your agents.

3. Less granular control. Shopify Magic is designed to be easy to use, which is great, but it sometimes means you have less control. You can’t set up complex, custom automation rules or deeply customize the AI’s personality and actions without getting into code. Rolling it out gradually can also be a challenge.

An infographic showing how eesel AI can connect to multiple external knowledge sources, a limitation for tools like Shopify Magic when answering 'what is Shopify AI called'.

For businesses that rely on a mix of platforms and need a more powerful, customizable AI solution, specialized platforms can be a better fit. For example, eesel AI is designed to bring all your knowledge sources together and integrate directly into the helpdesk you’re already using, giving you full control without making you change your entire workflow.

Shopify AI pricing explained

So, what’s all this going to cost? Here’s the good news: the Shopify Magic features, including Sidekick and the content generators, are available for free to all Shopify merchants. It doesn’t matter which subscription plan you’re on.

Of course, "free" means it’s included with your paid Shopify subscription. You still need to be on a plan to use it. Here’s a quick look at the standard monthly pricing for Shopify’s main plans:

Plan	Monthly Price (USD)	Key Features
Basic	$39/month	Great for solo entrepreneurs, includes all core e-commerce features.
Shopify	$105/month	Designed for small teams, with more staff accounts and reporting.
Advanced	$399/month	For scaling businesses, offering advanced reports and lower fees.

Pricing info is from Shopify’s pricing page and could change.

The key takeaway here is that there are no extra per-use or per-resolution fees for using Shopify Magic’s features. This makes it a really accessible way to start experimenting with AI for your business.

An alternative to Shopify Magic

Shopify Magic is an excellent starting point, but businesses that need to scale their support often find they need more power and flexibility. This is where a dedicated AI platform like eesel AI can really shine.

Unlike Shopify Magic, which is locked into the Shopify ecosystem, eesel AI is built to work with all the tools you already use.

Here’s how a tool like eesel AI addresses the limitations of a platform-specific AI:

• Get set up in minutes, not months: You can connect your helpdesk (like Zendesk or Gorgias), plug in your knowledge sources, and have a fully functional AI agent ready to go, all by yourself. There’s no need to sit through mandatory sales calls or demos to get started.

• Bring all your knowledge together: eesel AI integrates with over 100 sources, including Google Docs, Confluence, Notion, and even your past support tickets. This gives your AI a complete picture of your business, which means more accurate and helpful answers for your customers.

• You’re in control of automation: With a workflow engine, you get to decide exactly which tickets get automated. You can create custom AI personas, set up actions to look up order information from any system, and triage tickets automatically.

• Test without the risk: A powerful simulation mode lets you test your setup on thousands of your past support tickets before you go live. This gives you an accurate forecast of how well it will perform and lets you fine-tune things risk-free.

A screenshot of the eesel AI simulation mode, which helps businesses test their setup before going live, a key consideration beyond 'what is Shopify AI called.'

If your goal is to build a smart, scalable support system that fits perfectly with your existing tech stack, a dedicated platform provides the kind of power and control that a built-in tool like Shopify Magic can’t quite offer.

This video introduces Shopify's AI assistant, Sidekick, showing how it can simplify tasks for e-commerce business owners.

Is Shopify Magic right for you?

So, back to the big question: what is Shopify AI called? It’s Shopify Magic, a suite of free, built-in tools designed to help merchants with everything from content creation to data analysis.

For solo entrepreneurs and small businesses that live and breathe inside the Shopify ecosystem, it’s a fantastic and cost-effective tool. It can genuinely save you time and help you get more done.

But as your business grows and your support needs get more complex, you might start to feel its limitations. If you rely on external knowledge bases or dedicated helpdesks, you’ll likely need a more powerful solution. That’s where platforms like eesel AI come in. They’re built for that next stage of growth, offering the flexibility, control, and deep integrations needed to build a truly intelligent and scalable customer support operation.