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AI Agent explainedUpdated a day ago

AI Agent helps your shoppers browse, buy, and get support automatically and in your brand's voice, so your team can focus on the conversations where they're needed most. You get a dedicated AI Agent for each Shopify store you connect. It works across email, chat, and SMS, helping new shoppers find products and resolving post-purchase questions like returns, order changes, and shipping updates.

You shape what AI Agent does by giving it knowledge about your store, skills for the conversations you want it to handle, a tone of voice that matches your brand, and actions that let it make changes in your connected tools. This article explains what AI Agent is and what it includes.

In this article, you'll learn:

What AI Agent does

AI Agent plays two roles, both included in your AI Agent subscription:

  • Support agent — resolves post-purchase conversations like returns, order tracking, cancellations, and missing items
  • Shopping assistant — engages pre-purchase shoppers on email, chat, and SMS, helping them find products and make a purchase

The same AI Agent fills both roles. The difference is in the kind of conversation it's responding to.

Within each role, you choose how much AI Agent takes on. With skills, you can start with a few conversation types — like returns or order status — and expand AI Agent's coverage at your own pace.

Beyond responding, AI Agent can also take actions in your connected tools — like canceling an order or processing a return — and hands over conversations to your team when it can't or shouldn't handle them. You can review AI Agent's performance in dedicated reports, overall or broken down by role where it matters.

Merchants who subscribed to AI Agent prior to July 16, 2025 may need to upgrade their subscription to include the shopping assistant role.

What shapes AI Agent's behavior

Gorgias gives you a set of building blocks to tailor AI Agent to your brand. Each is a lever for shaping a different aspect of AI Agent's behavior. Together they determine how AI Agent handles each conversation. The more deliberately you configure these building blocks, the more AI Agent's responses reflect how your team would resolve a shopper's inquiry.

  • Skills — a set of instructions for a specific type of conversation, like returns or order cancellations. Skills are the primary way you direct AI Agent's behavior. Each skill bundles one or more intents (the trigger) and instructions (what AI Agent should do).
  • Knowledge — your brand's content. AI Agent draws on your help center articles, website content, documents, guidance, and Shopify data to respond accurately and on-brand.
  • Actions — let AI Agent perform tasks in your connected tools, like canceling an order, processing a return, or updating a shipping address. Actions are opt-in and configurable. You choose which ones AI Agent can take, and the conditions under which it takes them. See [create an action to connect AI Agent to other apps].
  • Tone of voice — how AI Agent sounds when responding to shoppers, set in your tone of voice settings.
  • Language settings — AI Agent supports over 80 languages and replies in any of them, even when your knowledge isn't translated.
  • Vision — AI Agent reads and understands images shoppers share, like photos of damaged items or screenshots of receipts.
  • Shopping assistant configurations — settings that apply only to pre-purchase conversations, like selling style and discount strategy, and shopper engagement features.

Where AI Agent works

AI Agent can handle conversations over email, chat, and SMS. The same knowledge, skills, and tone of voice apply across all channels. AI Agent adapts its responses to fit the channel — shorter and faster on chat and SMS, and fuller on email.

For first-time AI Agent setup, see set up and go live with AI Agent.

How you stay in control

AI Agent has built-in tools that help you understand its responses and shape its behavior over time.

  • Handover to humans — AI Agent hands over to your team when it can't confidently respond, encounters a sensitive topic, or detects frustration from the shopper. Handover is a safety net for everything AI Agent doesn't yet know how to handle, and the conversations that get handed over become signals for what to teach AI Agent next. You can also configure your own handover rules in your AI Agent settings.
  • AI reasoning — see why AI Agent responded the way it did on any ticket, then use it to identify what to change when a response doesn't meet your expectations.
  • Direct feedback — rate AI Agent's responses on closed tickets to influence how it handles similar conversations going forward. See coach AI Agent and give feedback to improve its responses.

For the broader cycle of improving AI Agent over time, see how AI Agent improves over time.

FAQ

Can I continue to use automation features like flows and order management?


Yes. Simple automations like flows and order management are included with your AI Agent subscription. They run alongside AI Agent on your tickets — often handling the first part of a conversation before AI Agent steps in if more help is needed.

  • For flows, go to routeWorkflows > Tools > Flows
  • For order management, go to routeWorkflows > Tools > Order management

Does AI Agent use my macros?


No. AI Agent generates its own responses from your skills and knowledge, not from macros. Macros remain available for your human team to use when replying to tickets manually.

Can I use rules with AI Agent?


Yes. Rules and AI Agent can run on the same tickets — rules apply your conditional logic for tagging, routing, and other ticket actions, while AI Agent handles the conversation itself. See use rules with AI Agent for how to combine them.

How is AI Agent billed?


For details on pricing plans and how AI Agent's automated interactions are billed, see how you're billed for using Gorgias.

Next steps

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