Shopify, the e-commerce platform favored by luxury brands such as Victoria Beckham, Loewe and Byredo, has announced it is launching a new ‘agentic storefront’ tool for brands. These storefronts will aim to help brands connect the dots between their sales and consumer interactions within AI platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity.
From today, brands whose sites are built on Shopify can skip having to integrate with ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot individually — instead, they can toggle each AI platform “on” or “off” within their Shopify dashboards to choose which AI platforms they track their appearance on. Other AI platforms, such as Anthropic, Google AI Mode and DeepSeek, are not yet included in the tool, but Shopify says more platforms will be added soon.
Large language models (LLMs) surface product recommendations independently, crawling the internet for consumer suggestions — this new Shopify feature can’t change that. However, it will give brands a centralized tool in which to track the data they provide to those LLMs.
Within Shopify’s new tool, the company says that Shopify Catalog will “syndicate and surface” brands’ products in AI chats and allow brands to better track how they show up in these chats, essentially closing the loop between brands’ website presence and their presence in AI search. Shopify has also built a “Knowledge Base App” where brands can track policies, FAQs, and brand voice guardrails that influence how they appear in AI chats. Shopify says brands will be able to define their schema — the code added to product pages that helps search engines understand product details — and group products so that LLM crawlers behind platforms like ChatGPT are more likely to present accurate product information to users.
This update comes as brand marketing teams scramble to keep up with rapid commerce-focused AI developments this year, with the emerging practice of AI optimization. Early best practices recommended by experts include lengthier product descriptions that provide context on how a garment can be worn, and full FAQ sections for each product. Shopify is pitching its new tool as a one-stop shop to manage these elements in one place.
However, the new product is not truly “agentic”, as per the definition agreed upon by most AI experts, where AI models are able to take multi-step autonomous decisions and complete multi-step chains of reasoning without a human in the loop. In shopping, that looks like an AI agent handling the product search and completing a product purchase all on its own, without a human typing in their card details.
What does it mean for brands?
Beyond helping brands visualize a consumer’s journey from these AI platforms, Shopify’s new tool also addresses a big pain point that has emerged since AI entered the shopping chat: attribution. Now, Shopify says its new feature enables brands to see orders flow into their dashboard with “full AI channel attribution” — so they can see which platform customers used to find their products, and, crucially, get insights into the topics customers are asking about as well as search trends. This will make it easier for marketing teams to understand how brands are showing up in AI conversations, offering a stronger feedback loop for their AI optimization efforts.
“Attribution has always been the biggest challenge in the industry, so this is definitely something that needed to happen,” says Max Sinclair, CEO of Azoma AI, which helps brands shape their AI search strategies. “It’s going to get really complicated for merchants as we get all these different open-source protocols, which enable them to link to different AI engines, so it totally makes sense for Shopify — who have great developers and relationships with merchants — to build customer-friendly UX where brands can work on top of these protocols.”
It’s another clear sign that at the end of 2025, we’ve arrived at LLM-powered shopping. Two weeks ago, Perplexity followed in OpenAI’s footsteps by debuting an in-chat shopping experience with integrated checkout powered by PayPal for its customers in the US.
As AI platforms roll out commerce-focused updates in quick succession, early data suggests their simplified buying journey is driving up adoption. On Black Friday this year, AI traffic to US retail sites (measured by shoppers clicking on a link within an AI chat platform) increased 805% year-on-year, according to Adobe data, as consumers turned to LLMs for product research and deal comparisons. There are also early indications that the ability to refine product searches through an intent-based conversation is upping conversion: shoppers that landed on a US retail site from an AI chat platform were 38% more likely to convert versus non-AI traffic sources, as per Adobe’s Black Friday data analysis.
As the AI platforms themselves roll out new shopping-focused features in quick succession, it’s likely that Shopify’s competitors will soon follow suit. Although we have yet to reach truly “agentic” commerce, it’s clear that the platforms powering fashion’s online presence are laying the groundwork for its integration.
