Shopify is adding a dashboard that lets merchants track sales, orders, and conversions generated through AI shopping platforms such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot, part of a broader push to help businesses understand how AI chatbots are surfacing their products. The company also rolled out Campaign Autopilot, an AI marketing agent that can launch and optimize ad campaigns across channels including ChatGPT and Snapchat, charging only when a sale occurs.
Tracking AI-generated sales and search intelligence
The new dashboard inside Shopify's admin panel pulls together orders, sales, and conversion metrics from AI channels like ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, and Shop. Merchants can see what kinds of questions shoppers are asking AI tools and identify gaps in product information that may be limiting visibility in AI-generated recommendations. "One of the questions merchants have is, how does an agent discover my product?" said Aaron Glazer, Shopify's director of product.
A tool called Search Intelligence shows the most common AI shopping queries in a merchant's category and whether their products appear in results. It can flag missing descriptions or other data gaps that hurt visibility. Understanding how AI tools recommend products is becoming a core part of AI for Sales strategies. A separate feature, Knowledge Base, surfaces unanswered questions AI assistants ask about a business-such as store locations, customer service policies, or bulk ordering-and lets merchants add those answers directly.
Automating ad campaigns with AI
Campaign Autopilot acts as a virtual marketing agency inside Shopify. Merchants set a budget and goals, and the system recommends, launches, and optimizes campaigns across Meta, Google, and now also ChatGPT, Microsoft's advertising network, and Snapchat. The platform's Sidekick assistant can explain advertising concepts and help with account setup. "Transparency is totally one of the fundamental things we believe in," said Sachin Malhotra, Shopify's director of product for merchant marketing. The company says merchants see the actions the system takes and why, and they can choose whether to auto-allocate spending or just receive recommendations.
The Campaign Autopilot builds on Shopify's existing AI for Marketing tools, giving merchants a low-barrier way to test new customer acquisition channels. Merchants pay only when a sale is generated, and the system adjusts budgets across platforms based on performance.
The push toward AI-assisted shopping visibility
AI referrals still account for less than 1% of overall web traffic, according to Sensor Tower, but they are growing. The same firm found that AI referrals now drive more than 1.5% of traffic to Walmart and Target, up from less than 1% a year ago. In an IBM survey, 41% of consumers said they use AI assistants to research products, and another survey by eMarketer found that 53% of U.S. consumers have used AI tools to research purchases.
Sky Canaves, principal analyst at eMarketer, said smaller brands often face a disadvantage because large language models rely on widely available information. Shopify's tools aim to level the field by making it easier for smaller merchants to understand and improve their visibility in AI search. "This is addressing a top concern for a lot of [Shopify's] brands and merchants, which tend to be smaller," Canaves said.
Why this matters for sales professionals
For sales teams in e-commerce and retail, AI chat platforms are becoming a new pipeline. These tools give sales leaders a direct view into which AI channels are driving revenue, what questions buyers are asking, and where product data gaps are causing missed opportunities. Instead of guessing whether a product appears in ChatGPT's recommendations, a sales team can now see the queries where it's missing and fix the underlying data. Campaign Autopilot further lowers the barrier to testing AI-driven ad channels, letting teams allocate budget to platforms like ChatGPT and Snapchat without needing in-house marketing expertise. The result is a faster feedback loop: sales signals from AI shoppers can directly inform product descriptions, ad spend, and the questions the sales team prepares to answer.
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