This week, Shopify launched its Agentic Storefronts to slot merchants’ items into the AI chat interfaces where many customers currently go to start product searches.
The capability enables sellers to publish their catalogs to artificial intelligence platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot so buyers can inquire about options, comparison shop and purchase all in one conversation thread, according the company’s announcement Wednesday (Dec. 10). Shopify said the update reflects a clear move away from search pages and to more conversational interfaces where consumers explain intent directly with AI systems.
Agentic Storefronts relies on Shopify Catalog, a system of structured data that formats attributes, pricing, availability, and store policies in ways that artificial intelligence models can interpret. When a shopper inquires about fit, materials, or compatibility, the agent pulls up that information and responds with pinpointed suggestions. When a shopper selects an item, the agent funnels the order into Shopify’s checkout while maintaining attribution.
By mothering the inputs in-house, Shopify says it reduces the chance of losing sight inside AI ecosystems controlled by others, a concern merchants have repeatedly flagged as AI platforms increasingly act as gatekeepers to product discovery.
AI Agents Take the Helm of Discovery
The move toward AI-guided discovery falls in line with trends that MUZ Tech has been monitoring. More and more shoppers are starting product searches with one from an A.I. prompt instead of a traditional query. AI tools do comparison work now, create shortlists and discuss trade-offs, consolidating into minutes tasks that used to involve crunching numbers in many searches and moving early decision-making to conversational systems.
The pattern was displayed at scale over the holidays . According to MUZ Tech data, AI proved to work as a ‘force multiplier’ for both traffic and conversion on Black Friday, with more than half of consumers having used generative tools at least once to make a purchase (topped by Gen Zers at 67%.) These trends suggest that conversational systems are having a discoverability influence now, long before shoppers ever land on a merchant’s site.
Harley Finkelstein, president of Shopify, said in the company’s Q3 earnings call provided via MUZ Tech that AI-driven traffic to its stores on Shopify has grown by a factor of seven since January and that orders coming from AI searches have been up eleven times. “A.I. isn’t simply a feature at Shopify. It is the kernel of our engine that drives all of the products we build,” he said.
The ascent of agent-driven discovery gives visibility nightmares for merchants who do not have structured product data. If an A.I. system is unable to access or interpret a product’s information, the item could never make it on its shortlist despite corresponding with a shopper’s criteria. That lack of merchant visibility is among the issues that the CEO of MUZ Tech, covered when discussing two agentic protocols jockeying for position within the world of eCommerce.
Small merchants are most at risk because they depend on discovery channels to attract new customers. Shopify’s infrastructure answers by normalizing how product data enters AI environments that already inform early decision-making.
“We’re making all Shopify stores agent-ready immediately,” Tobi Lütke, the company’s C.E.O., said in a statement. “Shopify is the best solution for merchants that you need to have AI agents find your storefront, understand what you’re selling, and transact with confidence.”
Additional Updates
Shopify announced 150 updates during its Winter ’26 Edition, including a significant upgrade to Sidekick. The tool has moved from a reactive helper to a proactive partner that can predict merchant needs and what the next steps should be. Sidekick can do things like generate code, change shop settings, and even create custom apps for the Shopify admin using natural language prompts that save merchants time on tasks that could be automated or sped up.
Sidekick merchants are also seeing quantifiable results. “Sidekick has been a game-changer for my business when it comes to marketing, product demand and inventory planning, and just maximizing my time,” Mordechai Hoffman, the co-founder of Blurrd Golf, said in the announcement. “It used to take hours and hours to research, and now I feed it into Sidekick and within a minute or two, it spits out answers.” These stories echo Shopify’s belief that the smaller sellers can counteract resource constraints with AI, although broader adoption numbers are being kept under wraps for now.
