Shopify opens its catalog up to more AI agents

Key points

• Shopify announced Tuesday that shoppers can connect any AI agent to their Shop account to buy from its catalog of over a billion listings.
• Purchases are completed with one-click Shop Pay inside the agent conversation and require buyer approval for each order.
• The move expands Shopify's agentic commerce push beyond its September partnership with Meta's Muse agent.

Shopify announced Tuesday that it will let shoppers configure AI agents to purchase products on their behalf, expanding access to more than a billion listings in its catalog. The catalog includes items both on and off Shopify storefronts.

The change follows Shopify's September partnership with Meta, which let Meta's Muse agent browse and buy items for a human. Now shoppers can use any agent without a partnership integration.

How the feature works

Customers connect an agent to their account on Shop, a Shopify-owned platform that consolidates orders, tracks packages and recommends products. Checkout happens through the one-click Shop Pay feature within the conversation with the agent, and orders are funneled back to the Shop app.

Shopify describes the setup as a personal shopper that people can give rules, such as budget guardrails or showing only products with fast shipping. Buyers must approve each purchase.

personal shopper

— Shopify

AI shopping competition

E-commerce has become a battleground in the AI era, with many demos of agentic tools ending in a transaction such as buying clothing, booking a flight or ordering takeout for a human.

Big commerce players including Google and Amazon are investing in AI-driven shopping tools aimed at agents purchasing for users. The article also notes an ongoing fight between Amazon and AI companies like Perplexity, and more recently Meta's Muse, over whether agents should be able to shop for customers.