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Home » News » Shopify Now Enrolls Your Store in Every New AI Shopping Channel
A single default setting in Shopify could already be exposing your products to AI shopping apps that you didn’t choose. According to Slobodan Manic, the founder of No Hacks and a website optimization consultant, Shopify signs eligible stores up for every new AI channel it launches. His analysis appeared in Search Engine Journal on October 2, 2026. Here is what the setting does, how much it costs, and what store owners should look out for.
Shopify’s agentic storefronts are placing their products inside AI chat apps. Eligible stores get enrolled in every new application Shopify adds to the mix.
This is how eligible stores got placed on Meta on 8th September 2026, the day the social media giant launched Muse, an AI Agent which, in the company’s own word, can open browsers, fill forms, and negotiate for its users. Manic claims it is the same auto-enrollment which explained a row labeled Other channels in his own store admin. The row hosts a bunch of startups working on experimental shopping agents.
The setting is labeled ‘Allow Shopify to manage for me,’ and it is found at the topmost part of Sales channels, Agentic, in the Shopify admin. The option is ON by default unless a merchant has turned it OFF.
Shopify’s documentation describes the effect of the setting in layman’s terms. It says Agentic channels get access to the merchant’s products via Shopify Catalog. Direct checkout is enabled for the relevant channels. The store gets auto-enrolled in new channels.
Catalog is how most of these apps get a merchant’s list of products. Google is an exception because it reads them directly from Google Merchant Center.
Shopify’s own changelog entry of September 8th shows that products are shared with Meta by default using Shopify Catalog. The admin labels the Other channels row as a ‘group of AI platforms such as Perplexity,’ which can surface products to shoppers. The Shopify help page says the row is populated with independent developers and startups building niche or experimental shopping agents. It also includes new partners who have recently been given access to Catalog for testing purposes.
This is not the first time Shopify has auto-enrolled merchants. The company did the same on 12th January 2026. Manic notes that any merchant who flagged their channel to be on in May has been sharing their products with Meta and the Other channels row.
One last detail provides more context. Amazon has blocked Muse from its store on 20th September 2026, 12 days after Shopify shared its eligible stores’ products with it.
Shopify refers to this as direct checkout. The customer pays in a Shopify checkout inside the chat app, and they never open your website. It is turned on by default on three channels for stores that qualify.
Meta is open to stores selling to the United States, Canada, or Mexico. Google AI Mode and Gemini are open to US stores selling to US customers with a Google Merchant Center account. Microsoft Copilot is open to stores selling in the United States.
ChatGPT works differently in that it directs the customer to your store’s own checkout, inside an in-app browser or new tab on the web.
Tracking is where direct checkout gets interesting. Because the customer pays inside the chat app, the tracking code on your website does not run. Shopify states that Google Analytics and custom pixels will not fire in the Google and Copilot checkouts. Only server side tracking will work there, and third party analytics pixels will not fire in Meta’s checkout either.
Shopify still records the order, but Meta orders appear in the Shopify admin like any other sales channel. The risk is for merchants who track sales in Google Analytics or an ad dashboard, who can miss these purchases entirely.
Merchants maintain control. Manic notes that toggling off “Allow Shopify to manage for me” highlights three switches on his store, which relate to Shopify Catalog access, auto-enrollment for new storefronts, and direct checkout.
Each channel maintains its own set of controls, with Meta and Copilot possessing a toggle for catalog access and direct checkout, while ChatGPT only has access to the former. Google only has direct checkout, although Shopify notes that products will need to be eligible for Catalog, despite being turned off.
Automatically enrolling storefronts keeps the channels a merchant possesses, as well as prevents new ones from being added.
There is a delay. With catalog access toggled off, Shopify notes that it may take up to seven days before any product data is no longer shared.
Hiding a product becomes more complex, as a merchant will need to make it unlisted. Shopify’s product page warns that doing so also makes it invisible from sitemaps, search engines (such as Google), and the store’s own search.
For now, the channels are free. As of September 2026, Shopify’s help pages for ChatGPT, Google, Microsoft Copilot, and Meta say none of them charges a fee. Merchants pay only their usual payment processing fees. The merchant also stays the seller. On Meta, Shopify says the store remains merchant of record and keeps handling fulfillment, returns, and customer service.
Meta has signaled that the free period will not last. Mark Zuckerberg told Alex Heath on the Sources podcast, in an episode published September 8, 2026, that Meta expects to take a very small cut of each Muse transaction over time. He said the money would come from the businesses involved.
Manic says he found no similar plan from Google or Microsoft.
At the top of the Agentic page in the Shopify admin sits a number of shoppers. It is easy to read it as agents buying. Manic says it is not.
On his store, the page opens with a line about how many shoppers AI agents sent in the last 30 days. That figure matched the page’s online store sessions. Shopify’s documentation defines those as the total visits to the store from an AI channel over a set period. A direct checkout never opens the website, so a purchase made that way does not add to the count.
In other words, the count measures AI referred traffic. Someone asks an AI app a question, gets a link to your product, and clicks it. Manic argues that most of those visits should be people.
There is one open question. Since late September 2026, Shopify has removed the bots it can identify from its visit reports. Shopify does not say whether the Agentic page uses that same data.
The clicks are real. Shopify said in August 2026 that AI referred sessions to its storefronts grew 197 percent, roughly three times, year over year in the second quarter. Orders also tripled. For purchases an agent completes inside a chat app, Manic has seen no numbers from Shopify or anyone else. He argues that default on proves nothing until real agents use the feature.
The page’s sales figure adds another wrinkle. Shopify says it mixes referral based sales and sales through direct checkout. Filtering the orders list to Meta gives a closer view of what Meta’s checkout actually sold.
Manic’s advice is to filter the orders list by channel once a month. That number shows what the feature means for your store. It is also the number any future Meta fee would come out of.
He would still leave everything on. His one condition is to watch closely what Shopify adds to the channel list.
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