Kitt for Kit? How AI is Changing the Face of eCommerce

If, like me, you grew up watching episodes of Knight Rider, then you’ll understand how the car Kitt was one of the first tangible examples of the idea of AI helping humans to meet specific goals. It was every nerdy kid’s dream, including me, to one day own a car exactly like Kitt - sharp wit and all.

Brilliant, can see through walls, had weapons and tools available when needed, and could always come up with just the right solution at the right time in very dangerous situations.

Perhaps that show had a large adult following because of the supposed hotness of Michael Knight or even his astounding rebirth story. But for kids of all ages, it was Kitt the AI car that was the true star of the show. 

And so decades later, I’m tickled with excitement to discover that Shopify - one of the fastest growing and innovative eCommerce platforms in the world for brands selling direct to consumers and houses top brands such as Redbull; Tesla; Budweiser - has developed an AI marketing assistant called Kit.

It’s my theory that the Shopify developer team got their inspiration for the name from the 80’s Kitt. Certainly Shopify’s Kit is not as brilliant and freethinking as the car Kitt, however, Kit is still great progress on the AI front. 

This is my review of the top pros and cons of Shopify's Kit, and what the tangible next steps for improvement are:

Pros:

1. If you’re a beginner at social media ‘selling,’ Kit is great at showing you the basic ropes quite quickly. She asks very simple, direct questions on marketing tasks she could do to promote your brand on Facebook and Instagram. Through those series of questions, as a beginner, you start to understand the logical ecosystem and steps to growing brand awareness on those two platforms. If, however, you’re not a beginner, then this item would fall to the cons list. Because Kit’s strategies would be too basic for you and wouldn’t help you advance a lot in promoting your brand to new consumers or engaging with existing consumers.
2. If you don’t have time on any given day to post your brand on Instagram or Facebook (which you absolutely must do everyday), then Kit does save you some time. She can create a post for either platform and post them - all under 10 seconds. AI can process a huge amount of data at crazy speeds compared to the human brain. [Probably the reason I frequently get beaten in chess in 2 minutes flat by my chess app.]
3. She’s cheap labor. If you’re a startup, this might be helpful. You don’t have to pay for Kit - she’s actually free, but some of her additional features are at a nominal cost per month. 

Cons:

1. Lack of design flexibility. Part of what build the brand story for a consumer is the design elements of a brand. They speak to a consumer’s subconscious and delivers powerful messages. Your ability to fully change design elements in Kit’s marketing emails or social media posts is somewhat limited. Quite frankly, they come out looking 2D and lacking in personality. And you wonder if the consumer will be able to tell. Probably.
2. She’s AI, so she does lack a personality. But, as humans, we tend to want to emotionally connect in some way to whatever were engaging with. It’s what makes us so complex. Certainly, Kit’s developers have tried to inject personality by having her use exclamation marks or having her say ‘we,’ but it’s not difficult to see through that. Perhaps AI will never have personality because they are machines at the end of the day, and we’re just going to have to find a way to accept that. 
3. Kit is not a good copy writer. She does not write value-driven content that is driven by a deep understanding of your audience. Her marketing copy leaves a lot to be desired. It’s not clear how plugged into the Facebook algorithm Kit is, but there seems to be a very large gap between what copy is actually engaging to consumers and the copy that Kit creates. I’ve had to have changed all of thousands of FB and IG copy she’s created for us. And while doing it, I always feel like the disappointed teacher or parent that had such high hopes for her kid!

Tangible Next Steps for Improvement:

1. Kit somehow needs to be plugged into FB’s algorithm. FB’s algorithm is the goose that laid the golden eggs, and thus sacred and off limits to everyone, but there’s got to be a way for Kit to understand the algorithm and future iterations of it, or perhaps build a smarter algorithm. Whether you’re a start up brand or an established enterprise brand, the last thing you want to do is try to build your own algorithm to understand and reach your audience, especially when FB exists. However, you need constant data on your consumers, and this is where Kit could become more useful if developed further. There needs to be a maturity of understanding of your brand’s audience, including all the nuances. Kit does not seem to evolve or improve with time. Nor help you understand your audience better or how to engage them more effectively. She literally stays at the same level of performance always. So becomes more of a low-skilled assistant than artificial intelligence. Intelligence being the key word. 
2. A lot more work on how AI can understand the nuances of human personality and cultural contexts, and be able to recreate that understanding in better marketing copy.