Jaffer says many shoppers meet Shopify through the purple Shop Pay button at checkout.
“You may have gone to the checkout and seen that purple shop pay button.”
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Miqdad Jaffer
1 episodes · 20 quoted claims
Shopify has used classification models for fraud detection since its early days, giving merchants a fraud score on transactions.
“We did things along the lines of fraud detection, where a transaction comes in and it's not as easy to tell whether this is fraudulent or non fraudulent.”
Shopify created a suite of generative AI products called Shopify Magic, embedded in merchant workflows.
“we've created a suite of products called Shopify Magic. And the idea behind this was how do we embed this directly into the workflows”
Before generative AI, Shopify built product classification that assigns a product's category from its text and image.
“one of the more recent ones, even before generative AI, was product classification. So the idea of being able to determine the category of a product using its text and as well as its image”
Jaffer says merchants struggled with writing product descriptions, and billions of descriptions exist across Shopify.
“we saw them struggling with product descriptions daily. There's billions of them across Shopify”
The first version of Shopify Magic's description tool needed only keywords, a chosen tone of voice and a generate button.
“All a merchant has to do is they enter a couple keywords, they pick a tone of voice, and they press generate.”
Shopify added support for eight languages in its description generator, and merchants used it for translations.
“We introduced the ability to support eight languages, and we saw people writing translations with it”
Some merchants who did not speak English used the tool to write English product descriptions for English-speaking customers.
“there were merchants that didn't speak English and wanted to sell to an English audience and saw product descriptions as a way to bridge that gap.”
Jaffer describes Sidekick as Shopify's AI assistant built specifically for commerce.
“building Sidekick, which is the first of its kind AI enabled assistant, purpose built for commerce.”
Shopify built an internal ChatGPT-style tool, including one for searching its internal wikis, to encourage staff to use AI.
“we've built our own kind of internal ChatGPT instance equivalent. We have it for our internal wikis for search and discovery.”
Jaffer says many Shopify merchants were already using ChatGPT and similar tools before Shopify added its own AI features.
“we already had merchants that were using ChatGPT or whatever was out there to be able to prompt it”
Shopify's guiding principle is that AI never publishes without user involvement, so merchants see any message before it goes out.
“the AI will never write without user intervention, and so the merchant will always be able to see what the message is that's gonna go out there.”
Shopify's image tool lets merchants upload a product photo and swap in a different background.
“you upload a product image and then you pick what background needs to be switched out on.”
A merchant wanted to launch an outlet store for overstock inventory covering 3,000 SKUs (distinct products).
“he wanted to set up an outlet store for some of the overstock inventory that they had, and they had 3,000 SKUs that they wanted to put together”
The merchant said that without AI he would have hired a team and spent about three months building the outlet store.
“I would have hired a team. We would have taken three months to get this thing spun up”
Jaffer says Shopify users typically generate product descriptions several times before they are satisfied.
“We actually see that it takes multiple generations before the user is happy with what they have in front of them.”
Shopify's email subject line feature offers merchants three options to choose from and edit.
“subject lines, you get three options to choose from, you can change it”
Jaffer began as an engineer and moved into product management in meter data management for utilities.
“I took an initial role as a engineer and was introduced to product management in what was then meter data management.”
Jaffer estimates that about 99% of Shopify employees understand what AI hallucination means.
“I can almost guarantee that 99% of Shopify knows what that means and how that happens”
Jaffer argues AI will augment rather than replace people, comparing it to how Photoshop made designers more creative.
“it's the same as when Photoshop came out. Designers got much better and much more creative, and I think this will raise the bar for everyone”