TikTok added an AI agent between the video and checkout
answers from your product data
TikTok announced two new shopping features this week.
Shopping Assistant - a conversational agent that answers a shopper's questions on the product page
Buy Direct - a native checkout that lets someone buy from a brand with one tap from the For You feed
Both sit outside TikTok Shop. The brand remains the merchant of record for every transaction.
TikTok is testing both as ad features with eligible advertisers for now. Brands that want in go through their TikTok sales partner.
Source: TikTok
A couple of weeks back, I shared what changes on your side when Meta sells your products without the shopper visiting your site. TikTok is becoming a social app where a shopper can now ask a question and buy without leaving.
What a shopper goes through
Step 1: Your shopper sees a creator try on a product, gets curious and taps through to the product page. It opens inside TikTok's in-app browser with a chat window attached.
Step 2: They can ask whether it runs true to size, which colors are available or when it will ship. The agent responds using the information the merchant has provided. That merchant data is the only source it draws from.
Step 3: Once the shopper is ready, Buy Direct completes the purchase with their stored payment method and saved address. Order tracking stays inside TikTok, so there is no redirect or login standing between the question and the sale.
Without Buy Direct, TikTok says the shopper continues to checkout on your site, still inside its in-app browser.
Buy Direct needs an integration with the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP). That's the open standard Shopify and Google built for AI agents to buy from any merchant. Shopify is one of the commerce partners TikTok named.
Where the answers come from
TikTok has said what the agent helps shoppers with - product details, shipping, sizing and availability. Those answers need to live in structured fields on the product.
Shopify Catalog already feeds products to ChatGPT through Agentic Storefronts. And Buy Direct runs on UCP, which Shopify co-developed.
So it's highly likely TikTok reads that same product record.
TikTok hasn't named the feed it uses. It isn't listed in Shopify's Agentic settings yet. Either way, every answer comes from data you've given it.
These are the fields Shopify adds once you pick a category (example, sweaters).
Source: Shopify admin
Most of what shoppers ask about isn't in a field yet.
Across 400,000+ live Shopify products, we found 51% of what a shopper asks about sits somewhere in readable text and only 6% of that is filterable.
Four checks to do
1/ Pick five products you promote on TikTok. Open each one and see if you could answer a shopper's sizing, shipping and stock questions from its fields alone.
2/ Set sizes as variant options and fill the Size field under Category metafields. If your category has no fit field, put fit in one plain line in the description.
3/ Add a transit time to your shipping rates in Settings > Shipping and delivery, so there's a delivery estimate to give.
4/ Check that inventory tracking is on for those products.
TikTok's agent can now answer and sell inside the app - what it tells your shopper still comes from your product data.
The Shopify Catalog audit shows what an AI agent reads from your catalog and how you compare with competitors for the same shopper queries. Audit now →
Atomz AI fills in category attributes across your catalog, so an agent has the details shoppers ask about. Get in touch for a demo.
- Ankit
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