More AI agents will soon be able to browse and buy from Shopify listings, marking an expansion of the company’s agent commerce ambitions.
Shopify announced Tuesday that it will allow shoppers to configure their AI agents to purchase products on their behalf, giving more agents access to more than one billion listings in Shopify’s catalog. (The catalog consists of items inside and outside of Shopify stores.) In September, Shopify announced that it would partner with Meta to allow its Muse agent to search and purchase items on behalf of a human being; Now, buyers can use any agent without an association integration.
To set up the feature, customers connect an agent to their account on Shop, a Shopify-owned platform that consolidates orders, tracks packages, and recommends products. Like the Muse partnership, customers use the one-click Shop Pay feature to make payment within the conversation with the agent. Orders placed through the agent are funneled back to the Store app. Shopify markets the feature as a “personal shopper” that humans can give rules to, such as setting budget barriers or only showing products with fast shipping. Buyers must approve each purchase.
E-commerce has become one of the battlegrounds in the AI era; It’s no coincidence that many agent tool demos end with a transaction, whether buying clothes, booking a flight, or ordering takeout on behalf of a human being. The tech industry, including big commerce players like Google and Amazon, are investing in AI-powered shopping tools whose ultimate goal is for an “agent” to buy things for a human user. It’s also the basis of an ongoing fight between Amazon and AI companies like Perplexity (and more recently, Meta’s Muse) over whether agents should be able to shop on behalf of a customer.
