Image generation and simple codegen is pretty good in shopify magic, future plans for video?

Ask Me Anything Q&A AI and Automations AMA

Topic summary

Shopify’s built-in AI image generation tool is proving effective for creating product images and lifestyle shots showing products in use. The tool is being used successfully for generating media in metaobject-based lookbooks and similar test sections.

Current capabilities:

  • Image generation with good accuracy for product photography
  • Sidekick AI can generate basic layout structures

Current limitations:

  • Struggles with advanced features like interactivity
  • Follow-up prompts tend to modify entire sections rather than targeting specific elements

Open questions posed:

  • Will Shopify add video or 3D model generation directly in the admin?
  • What underlying AI models power different features?
  • Are there plans to let merchants bring their own AI (BYOAI) into the native admin image editor (not through third-party app dashboards)?

The discussion remains open with no official responses yet.

Summarized with AI on October 29. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Nice work on the image generation.
That it can do things like generate product images then ALSO generated people wearing/using the products with decent accuracy is pretty useful.
Lot of people probably not even aware this is right inside the admin.

The image-gen’s becoming a good tool for me make product-media for test sections like in a metobject based lookbook

Sidekick also generated most the layout structure but has problems with more advanced stuff like the interactivity or anything in follow up prompts that try to work only on 1 specific thing but the AI just kinda touches everything instead.

Questions

Any plans for other media generation(video, 3D models) directly in the admin?

Can you talk about s the underlying model(s) being used for different things?

Any plans to allow merchants to BYOAI directly in the admins native image editor ?
(not app dashboard, plenty of 3P apps/services already with their own dashboards/UI’s)