Not Every Shopify Chatbot Developer Is Talking About Shop with AI: What 4 Public Comments Actually Reveal

Start with the main point: there are not that many Shopify chatbot developers who have publicly and directly commented on this rollout.

If you expected a category-wide chorus of reactions, the public record does not support that. As of May 18, 2026, the verifiable source material shows only a small number of developers clearly speaking up, and they are not saying the same thing.

There is also an important framing correction to make. The center of gravity in the public discussion is not a neatly documented “Microsoft Clarity Shopify app upgrade” narrative. The verifiable conversation clusters much more clearly around the March 24-25, 2026 wave of discussion about:

• ChatGPT shopping upgrade
• Shopify Agentic Storefronts
• ChatGPT / Microsoft Copilot / Gemini / Google AI Mode as new product-discovery surfaces

So this article does not pretend to analyze an event chain I could not fully verify in public. Instead, it answers a narrower and more accurate question using only public, checkable developer comments:

What did developers in Shopify’s chatbot category actually think when Shopify products started being pushed into AI shopping interfaces like ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini?

The answer is that their reactions split into roughly two camps.

Camp One: Treating This as a New Distribution Revolution

The shared belief in this group is straightforward: AI conversation interfaces are becoming a new product-discovery layer, and whoever adapts first gets the distribution advantage first.

Verifast: This is not a feature update. It is new “AI shelf space.”

Of all the public comments I found, the most direct and aggressive came from Utkarsh Trivedi, co-founder of Verifast.

In a LinkedIn post published on March 25, 2026, he was explicit:

• “Yesterday (March 24), ChatGPT rolled out a full shopping upgrade.”
• “All Shopify stores go live inside ChatGPT by default this month.”
• “Set up your catalog once → show up in ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Gemini.”
• “AI shelf space” is the new SEO.

Original post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/utkarsh-verifastai_ecommerce-ai-shopify-activity-7442448675630555136-4MUH

What matters here is not just that he acknowledges the OpenAI-Shopify distribution surface is real. He gives it a sharper definition: the competitive battlefield of SEO is moving toward AI recommendation slots.

That is why the tone is not cautious. It is urgent. Trivedi frames the moment as a contest over long-term brand discovery:

• brands optimizing now will own discovery over the next decade
• brands waiting to “see how it plays out” may later pay for visibility they could have captured for free

This is a classic “new shelf” argument.
Before, brands fought for Google rankings, Meta ad inventory, and Shopify on-site conversion real estate. Now they are starting to fight for the answer slots inside ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini.

Rep AI: Agentic commerce is here, and the app stack has to change with it

The public framing from Yoav Oz, co-founder of Rep AI, is less overtly aggressive than Verifast’s, but it is still clearly on the “lean in” side.

In a LinkedIn post on March 25, 2026, he wrote:

• “The agentic commerce era is here, and Shopify is leading the charge.”
• “millions of merchants selling directly in AI chats like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot”
• brands that want to scale on Shopify in 2026 need apps that move beyond passive automation and toward action

Original post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yoavoz_shopify-ecommerce-agenticcommerce-activity-7442597112044736512-1QIB

What is interesting here is that Yoav does not frame the issue as “will Shop with AI steal on-site traffic?” He starts from a different assumption:

AI chat interfaces are now part of the retail journey.

So instead of resisting that change, he repositions the product around it. He describes Rep AI as something that:

• does not just answer questions
• actively guides shoppers
• personalizes recommendations
• closes sales around the clock

That is a meaningful reframing. It shifts the Shopify chatbot from a support widget into an AI sales concierge.

In other words, Rep AI’s reaction is not: “Don’t let ChatGPT take our job.”

It is: “If conversational shopping is becoming normal, Shopify merchants will need an AI concierge on their own storefront even more.”

Camp Two: Accepting the Distribution Shift, but Defending On-Site Context as the Real Moat

The second group also accepts that something important has changed. The difference is where they locate defensibility.

Their core claim is this:

AI platforms may handle discovery, but the highest-value personalization context still lives inside the merchant’s own storefront.

Gorgias: ChatGPT matters, but it is missing merchant-side context

Gorgias published one of the clearest statements in this camp on March 25, 2026.

The company opens by plainly acknowledging the shift:

• “Shopify merchants can now sell inside ChatGPT.”
• “Discovery, questions, checkout, all in one conversation.”
• “This is a big shift for commerce.”

Original post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/gorgias_gorgias-conversational-shopping-activity-7442611578316742656-4w9t

But Gorgias does not stop at “this is big.” It immediately adds the key qualification:

ChatGPT may be strong at discovery, but it is missing a layer of context that only exists on the merchant’s actual storefront.

Gorgias explicitly lists what that missing layer includes:

• what the customer already has in their cart
• what their browsing history looks like
• what they bought in the past
• what those behaviors imply about preferences

From there, the company anchors the value of its own AI Agent in that context layer:

true personalization is not just about being able to chat. It is about being able to act on first-party merchant context.

This is a smart and very realistic defensive posture.

Gorgias is not denying the importance of ChatGPT shopping. If anything, it fully accepts it. What it does instead is redraw the competitive boundary:

• ChatGPT is a new discovery surface
• on-site AI is where those conversations become deeply personalized commerce experiences

That means Gorgias is not reacting with “this should not happen.” It is reacting with something closer to: “This is happening, but do not confuse the discovery layer with the complete shopping experience.”

Max Pruvost: Chat is no longer a widget. It is becoming the shopping experience itself

Still within the Gorgias orbit, Max Pruvost published a LinkedIn post on February 24, 2026 that helps explain why Gorgias later took that position, even though his post predates the March rollout.

He wrote:

• “chat was just text an add-on sitting on top of an e-commerce site”
• “conversational commerce only becomes real when chat stops being a widget and starts becoming the experience”

Original post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/max-pruvost_for-years-chat-was-just-text-an-add-on-sitting-activity-7432005197624717312-QMFE

This post does not directly discuss ChatGPT shopping, Copilot, or Gemini. So it should not be presented as a direct comment on that specific rollout.

But it does show something important:

Gorgias had already been moving, philosophically, from chat as a support entry point to chat as a full commerce interface.

So when Shopify later pushed products into external AI conversation channels, the natural Gorgias response was not panic. It was closer to:

“Good. Shoppers will get used to buying through AI. The next question is who delivers the richer conversational experience once they arrive on the merchant’s own site.”

A Third Kind of Reaction: Not a Direct Comment on the Rollout, but a Clear Product-Level Adaptation to ChatGPT-Trained Behavior

Some developers did not directly comment on the March 24-25 rollout at all. But their public posts still show that user behavior shaped by ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude is already forcing Shopify chatbot builders to rethink how they present and sell software.

Zipchat: People are no longer reading feature pages. They are asking AI-style questions instead

Zipchat founder Luca Borreani did not directly discuss Shopify’s default distribution switch in his LinkedIn post from April 13, 2026. Still, the post belongs in this article because it captures a real downstream consequence of the same shift.

He opens with a blunt line:

• “Nobody reads software websites anymore.”

Then he explains why:

• “ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, they trained people to type a question and get a direct answer for their exact situation.”

Original post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lucaborreani_nobody-reads-software-websites-anymore-activity-7449478949002170368-MbBE

This is not just generic AI commentary. Luca describes a concrete behavioral change:

Users used to read:

• value proposition
• feature lists
• social proof
• CTA sections

Now they are more likely to ask:

• I run a 7-figure Shopify brand doing 300 orders a day. Is this right for me?
• I’m building SaaS, not ecommerce. Can I still use this?

Zipchat responded by running a homepage experiment:

• one version keeps the traditional feature-page structure
• the challenger swaps the static feature list for a live AI agent

This still is not a direct comment on the Shop with AI rollout. But it reveals something important:

even without publicly talking about Shopify’s Agentic Storefronts, strong chatbot developers are already adapting to the same structural shift.

Once users are trained to behave like question askers, old feature pages, FAQ blocks, and static sales copy start to feel too slow, too abstract, and too lacking in context.

The Real Divide Is Not “Do You Believe in AI Shopping?” It Is “Who Owns the Final Context Layer?”

When you place these public comments side by side, the divide becomes fairly clear.

The opportunity camp

Represented by: Verifast, Rep AI

Their core view:

• AI platforms are becoming a new product-discovery layer
• default inclusion in ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini is a structural opportunity
• brands need to adapt to new distribution rules quickly
• the future competitive battle is not just SEO, but AI recommendation presence

The defensive-context camp

Represented by: Gorgias

Their core view:

• external AI conversation surfaces will matter more and more
• but high-value conversion still depends on first-party merchant data
• cart state, browsing history, purchase history, brand voice, and post-purchase logic do not live inside ChatGPT
• therefore on-site AI is not being replaced; its value is being redefined

The product-rewrite camp

Represented by: Zipchat

Their core view:

• the first step is not to argue over who owns traffic
• it is to accept that users have already been retrained by AI-style interactions
• static product education must increasingly give way to contextual, direct, AI-mediated answers

Which Companies I Deliberately Did Not Write into the “Commentary” Section

To avoid turning “I found a search snippet” into “I found a real public comment,” I deliberately left several companies out of the commentary section.

As of May 18, 2026, I searched for evidence around:

• Tidio
• Chatway / Premio
• Manifest AI
• Flyweight

I did find search results, snippets, and related discussion around some of them. But that is not enough. The problem was that:

• some results were second-hand references
• some search snippets showed more text than the publicly visible page exposed
• some proved ecosystem relevance, but not a direct public comment on the rollout itself

Under those conditions, writing them up as if they had clearly commented would not be rigorous.

What These Comments Actually Mean for Shopify Merchants

If you are a Shopify merchant, these developer comments do not add up to a slogan. They add up to a more concrete operational reality.

1. External AI shopping interfaces are no longer theoretical

At minimum, both Gorgias and Verifast publicly acknowledge the same thing:
being discoverable inside ChatGPT-style interfaces is no longer a future scenario. It is now part of the live distribution environment.

2. But “being in ChatGPT” does not mean you have already won

If you only secure visibility but fail to connect product data, support flows, personalization logic, cart context, and post-purchase handling on your own storefront, then what you gained is a chance to be seen, not a full conversion engine.

3. The Shopify chatbot category is not disappearing because of external AI distribution

If anything, it is more likely to fragment into different jobs:

• one layer focused on off-site discoverability and recommendation eligibility
• one layer focused on on-site contextual conversion
• one layer focused on rewriting the entire discovery-and-answer experience

The real risk is not simply that “ChatGPT will replace chatbots.”

The real risk is that your store is still using a 2024 feature-page logic while your customers have already shifted to a 2026 AI-question logic.

Final Judgment: Public Commentary Is Sparse, but the Direction Is Clear Enough

There are not enough direct public comments to claim that the entire Shopify chatbot category has spoken with one voice.

But the direction visible in the material that is publicly verifiable is clear enough:

• Verifast sees a new distribution shelf
• Rep AI sees an agentic-commerce-driven reordering of the app stack
• Gorgias sees a new boundary between external discovery and on-site context
• Zipchat sees a permanent shift in how users ask questions and evaluate software

This is not a story in which everyone is excited.
It is also not a story in which the chatbot category is simply about to die.

It looks more like the beginning of a reallocation of responsibility:

AI platforms are taking over more of discovery, while on-site AI continues to compete for understanding, persuasion, and conversion.

Who wins will not be determined by who shouts “Shop with AI” first.
It will be determined by who connects those two layers first and best.

Sources

• Gorgias official LinkedIn, 2026-03-25: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/gorgias_gorgias-conversational-shopping-activity-7442611578316742656-4w9t
• Utkarsh Trivedi / Verifast LinkedIn, 2026-03-25: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/utkarsh-verifastai_ecommerce-ai-shopify-activity-7442448675630555136-4MUH
• Yoav Oz / Rep AI LinkedIn, 2026-03-25: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yoavoz_shopify-ecommerce-agenticcommerce-activity-7442597112044736512-1QIB
• Luca Borreani / Zipchat LinkedIn, 2026-04-13: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lucaborreani_nobody-reads-software-websites-anymore-activity-7449478949002170368-MbBE
• Max Pruvost / Gorgias LinkedIn, 2026-02-24: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/max-pruvost_for-years-chat-was-just-text-an-add-on-sitting-activity-7432005197624717312-QMFE