Shopify AI Features You Can’t Ignore From the 2025 Horizons Launch

Shopify’s new foundation, Horizon, brings 10 new free themes that aren’t just pretty—they’re optimised for conversion and mobile-first shopping. Names like Ritual, Fabric, and Dwell are more than just templates—they’re blueprints built for speed, clarity, and checkout flow.

But the real innovation? AI theme generation.

You type: “Clean beauty store with soft tones and featured bundles.”

You get: A complete draft of a working theme.

You want a countdown banner? A feature block? Just describe it. Magic does the rest.

And when it’s time to tweak, the editor is finally less frustrating: hover-to-preview, block categories, one-click edits, and complete copy/paste for sections. It all adds up to less back-and-forth with developers.

Sidekick is no longer a gimmick. It’s your daily dashboard co-pilot. This version handles multi-step reasoning, meaning it doesn’t just answer questions—it solves problems. Ask why Wednesday’s revenue dipped, and it checks everything from ad spend to inventory.

Sidekick now also speaks 20+ languages, works inside your mobile app, and can even screen share with you. Want to generate a product hero image while you’re in line for coffee? You can.

The new point-of-sale system feels built for 2025. The interface is faster and more intuitive. Staff can now complete ship-and-carry-out orders in one transaction. Tap to Pay turns your phone into a checkout terminal—ideal for events, pop-ups, or even store expansions.

What really impressed me is the Display Editor—now you can brand everything: carts, receipts, screens. It’s a subtle but powerful way to extend your identity offline.

Shopify Checkout just got faster by two full seconds. In ecommerce, that’s huge. Add in split shipping with flat rates, and you reduce friction for orders from multiple warehouses.

It now supports Apple Pay for subscriptions and headless checkouts. You’ll also see carbon-neutral shipping options, and—believe it or not—you can now use Shopify Checkout inside games like Roblox.

Shopify now supports multi-entity stores, meaning you can operate multiple regional companies from one dashboard. Payouts in local currencies reduce foreign exchange loss. You can now show duties and taxes baked into product pricing, and Klarna is available in more countries.

As someone who has helped brands expand into the EU and Latin America, I know this solves so many compliance and ops issues upfront.

Unified discount codes are finally here. One code can apply to products, shipping, or entire carts—no more stacking logic. Shopify Email and Flow now ship with ready-made audience segments and automation templates, so your team can launch in hours, not days.

Shopify Collabs also got an upgrade. With the mobile app, brands can source, brief, and pay creators without leaving the platform.

Shop App isn’t just for tracking anymore. Now, it recommends products in real-time based on user behaviour. Swatches look just like your product page, store credit is easier to use, and customers can even share their wishlists as collections.

This turns your product catalog into a loop—more eyeballs, intent, and reorders.

You can now feed your approved brand facts into external AI platforms. When someone asks ChatGPT about your eco materials or sizing advice, it pulls your actual data, not guesswork scraped from Google.

This one’s under the radar but huge for CX.

Shopify Plus merchants now get complete B2B logic inside one store. Payment terms, customer-specific pricing, and shared catalogs now live inside the core Shopify admin.

Instead of running different storefronts for wholesale, retail, and regions, you centralise. One inventory. One backend. One team.

Pick lists now include product images and exact SKUs to cut packing errors. Refunds can be issued as store credit, even if the customer used another payment method. Product cards now show interactive content like swatches and ratings, and predictive search gets smarter.

Dev teams get faster compile times, no tunnel setups, and unified UI components across admin, customer accounts, and apps. Web components can embed buy buttons in any CMS or page builder.

And Hydrogen now supports AI shopping agents—bots that can recommend products, answer questions, and even build carts.

To help people learn all of this, Shopify made a retro-style game called Horizon Drive. You play through feature walkthroughs while “driving” across levels. It's lighthearted but genuinely smart: it turns onboarding into something fun.