Platform & products

AI shopping channel

Definition

An AI assistant or AI search surface that recommends products to shoppers and links to, or completes, the purchase. The main ones in 2026 are ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Mode and the Gemini app, and Perplexity. Each one reads product data from a catalog, a feed or the open web, and each has its own rules for checkout.

Defined in AI Shopping Channels: How Products Get Into ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini and Perplexity.

Related terms

AI Mode: Google Search's conversational mode, launched in the U.S. on May 20, 2025. Google describes it as using a "query fan-out" technique that breaks a question into subtopics and searches each one. In Search Console, a follow-up question in AI Mode counts as a new query.
Agentic storefronts: Shopify's way of selling inside AI channels such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and Google AI Mode — active by default for eligible stores and managed under Sales channels → Agentic.
Shopify Catalog access: The per-channel permission that lets an AI channel receive your product data (titles, descriptions, images, prices, availability) from Shopify Catalog. Turning it off filters your products out of what Catalog sends that channel. It doesn't remove your products from Shopify Catalog itself.
Direct checkout: A Shopify-powered checkout that runs inside an AI channel, so the shopper pays without leaving the conversation. It's on by default for eligible stores on Google AI Mode and Gemini, Microsoft Copilot and Meta. ChatGPT has none: Shopify sends ChatGPT buyers to your online store checkout.
Shopify Agentic plan: A Shopify plan for merchants who don't use Shopify as their ecommerce platform. It adds their products to Shopify Catalog and lets them sell through agentic storefronts in AI channels, and on other Shopify channels such as the Shop channel, without a published Shopify online store. It has no monthly subscription fee; payment and app fees can apply.
Shopify Catalog: Shopify's standardized, enriched dataset of eligible merchants' products, made available to AI channels; eligibility starts at the Starter plan.

All 157 terms

Can AI channels list your products?

Every product in your public feed against Shopify Catalog's rules, plus robots.txt, policies and product data. About 20 seconds.

Run the eligibility check Agentic Commerce Setup