Meet Shopify's free AI background editor

🪄 Shopify Magic is free

Shopify plans on rolling out its newest AI tool: an image editor. Shopify Magic lets 2 million of Shopify’s merchants:

• Create an AI background prompt

• Choose from the default styles or backgrounds

• Selecting the recommended background that the AI chose themselves.

The AI recommends backgrounds based on the image of the product itself and can remove the backgrounds of images taken by the merchant.

All of these features are available for free.

🎨 Shopify Magic levels the playing field for creatives

According to Glen Coates (Shopify’s Vice President of Product), most sellers don’t have access to the high quality studios and photography that big brands have.

Since a large part of their customer base are small time entrepreneurs, the tools allow for a more fair game in creatives.

❌ But it isn’t the first

Shopify isn’t the first one to experiment with AI image generation for its stores.

1. Google unveiled new shopping features, including Product Studio for sellers. This offers ability to remove or add custom product backgrounds through text prompts and increase resolution.

2. Amazon also hit back by creating its own version of AI images. Based on product details, a "Generate” button creates lifestyle and brand themed images and backgrounds just for you.

3. Taobao created an image generator where items can be made in different positions and backgrounds.

'Get me a gift for my pet lover sister'; Etsy gets an AI for gifts

Etsy, the biggest online marketplace for unique and handmade items with 90 million sellers, recently introduced Gift Mode:

• Gift Mode combines the power of AI and human curation to recommend the perfect gift for any occasion.

🎁 A Game-Changer in Gift Shopping

Etsy CEO Josh Silverman talked about the impact of Gift Mode in a recent blog post in its ability to take on two challenges faced by gift-givers:

• 2/3 of Americans have a hard time finding the perfect gift

• Removing the stress with procrastination and making sure gifts arrive on time

❓️ How Gift Mode Works

The process is like an online quiz, where users provide information about the recipient's interests, budget, and the specific occasion.

1. Gift-givers desrcribe the recipient and the occasion to the AI

2. Gift Mode's machine learning technology matches them with items from Etsy sellers.

The technology behind Gift Mode incorporates OpenAI's GPT-4 to process its information and requests.

🌏️ Etsy's Vision for the Future

Silverman said that the current launch of Gift Mode is just the beginning of Etsy's investment in the gifting space. The company wants to add more interests and new personas in response to emerging trends to always be relevant during the gifting seasons.

Meet Rufus: Amazon's newest AI assistant

🐕‍🦺 Rufus: Your own Amazon buddy

Rufus is Amazon’s newest shopping assistant that makes shopping more natural and conversational. Rufus is like a go-to guide for all things Amazon:

• It answer questions

• Helps in product discovery

• Gives recommendations based on your chats

Amazon Rufus trains itself through data from Amazon's product list, customer reviews, community Q&As, and online sources.

Because of this, Rufus knows about all the things Amazon sells and what customers say about them. This helps it in giving the best recommendations.

According to Sellerapp, there were 353 million product listed on Amazon in 2022 and 2.72 billion unique monthly visitors in 2023.

💬 Some examples of what to ask Rufus

• If a certain type of running shoe would be good for basketball

• Advice on what water tumbler to buy

• What to buy for a beach trip with your coworkers

• How to decorate your rock-themed room.

• What's different between things like cosmetics, clothes, ingredients and much more.

• Gift ideas for someone’s birthday

• The best LEGO for an 11 year old boy