# Every ecommerce hero needs a Sidekick

An episode of [The Stack Overflow Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1483510527), 9 Jan 2026, 30 min.

Audio: https://rss.art19.com/episodes/15fe0a6a-66f9-4366-a2f2-7fcefa13aeb8.mp3?rss_browser=BAhJIhVJbnZpc2libGVOZXR3b3JrBjoGRVQ%3D--0761ee75eb25694efc17849092f8583c07f6c68b

Ryan is joined by Vanessa Lee, VP of Product at Shopify, to discuss how AI is a tech renaissance and how these new technologies are affecting the ecommerce world. They cover the development of Sidekick, their new tool, along with the general challenges of building AI tools, the importance of maintaining human oversight in AI, and what the future holds for personalized user experiences in ecommerce. Episode notes: We spoke with Shopify about how they’re building developer-focused AI products last May; you can check it out here. Sidekick is Shopify’s new AI assistant that combines commerce knowledge with advanced reasoning. Learn more about how Shopify is using AI agents to evolve their product taxonomy at scale on their blog. Connect with Vanessa on Twitter. Congrats to user Erwin Brandstetter for winning a Great Answer badge for their answer to How to convert empty to null in PostgreSQL?. TRANSCRIPT See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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