Shopify's AI Sidekick Shows Us the Future of Generative User Interfaces
If you watched Shopify Leadership in the last 9 months, you can tell they have gotten the AI bug. Tobi telegraphed this move to the world in his memo on May of 2023. He buried the lede, but it was plain to see there.
Here are a few observations about Shopify Sidekick in general:
* The Shopify sales team will love demoing it. Prospects do love a good shiny object.
* Even if it creates more businesses, I don't know if it will create more good businesses.
It's not for me to judge what people want to do with their life, but not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur and that's OK. Many people who try it may realize it's not for them, but that's OK too. Easier to execute? Yes. Sustainable? Unclear.
When I meet with entrepreneurs trying to find their way, one of the first questions I ask is to tell me about their life. I want to hear about their interests, passions, and where they have an unfair advantage over others. Where they are likely to spend the next 10 years.
We have seen the "more entrepreneurs" movie in the last 4 years, and it didn't end well.
This is the next evolution of arming the rebels for Shopify and shows they are not straying very far from this vision.
Here are a few of my observations from the trend towards AI Copilots generally:
* LLMs aren't going to provide you with "taste"
With respect to the smart people at Amazon, there's a reason that HBO and Apple create so many more great movies and TV shows. It's because a bunch of technologists' idea of what great writing is different than what works with audiences.
* LLMs could have an easy time flagging issues in your business but may have a difficult time prioritizing them or pinpointing why they work.
* The word "Generative UI" came to me this morning and in many ways, describes what we are talking about here. LLMs are a new-ish interface to computing.
This will help some new users explore a new UI without exploring a byzantine array of menus and forms. However, it could also be like the difference between search and browse in shopping. People will have preferences, and you might need both.
The great thing about LLM is that it's a natural language interface to computing, period.
* Privacy is still a major concern with LLMs. How do I limit what data Sidekick ingests? Particularly Enterprises will have concerns. Imagine if you are one of the top 3 book retailers on the planet and your competitor can now say: "What is the conversion rate for the leaders in my category?"
Sure, your competitor could pay for this data, but you just gave it away.
* The valuable LLMs will be the ones with the most data.
Unless Shopify becomes a Business Intelligence platform, Sidekick figures to be an accelerator for Shopify UI but may not be the business hub they imagine it will be in the future. For that to happen, it will need to go after companies like Snowflake, etc.
