Shopify is asking governments not to create AI-specific regulations, arguing that policymakers should instead update existing privacy, competition, and other rules where necessary and recognize voluntary industry-developed standards. Keyword there being “voluntary.”
The company also wants governments to reject “duplicative or jurisdiction-specific” statutes in favor of globally compatible rules, and to avoid requiring firms to audit and obtain pre-approval before launching AI applications. So basically, stay out of its way?
The company wrote:
“Shopify exists to make entrepreneurship more common. That is the principal lens we apply to AI regulation. From it, the question on every proposed law is simple: does this make it easier or harder to start a business? Most of what is being written today fails that test.”
I respect Shopify's AI ambitions, but this is a horrible take, as AI impacts the world in many, many more ways than starting a business. Existing laws around privacy and competition are already outdated. The U.S. and other governments don't just need new AI addendums layered on top of archaic laws; they need an entire new AI constitution.
Shopify also wrote in its blog post to “address the risk, not the tool” — which seems fair on the surface, until you realize that every example they offered up as legitimately high-risk is conveniently outside their lane: hospital diagnoses, court sentencing. They never name a single high-risk AI use in commerce.
And there are obvious ones sitting right in their market:
- AI-driven dynamic/surveillance pricing
- algorithmic credit and BNPL decisioning
- AI ad targeting and dark patterns
- recommendation systems that can defraud or manipulate
- models trained on merchant and shopper data without consent.
Any of those could carry real consumer harm. By drawing the risk line so the dangerous stuff is always somebody else's industry, “regulate the risk, not the tool” quietly becomes “regulate everyone's risk but ours.”
I do agree with Shopify that simple, universal AI regulation would be better than overlapping national and regional laws, but unfortunately that's not realistic in 2026. The current U.S. administration has all but abandoned consumer and worker protection agencies. And on a global scale, the World Trade Organization can't even come to a consensus about how to tax digital commerce moving forward. What makes Shopify think world powers can agree on how to govern AI?
On one hand, big tech companies talk about how game changing and impactful AI will be on the world as part of their sales pitch. “There's never been any technology like it.”
On the other hand, they downplay the potential negative consequences of that impact in regard to the need for proper regulation. “Not all AI uses are equally risky.”
AI regulation shouldn't be about convenience. It should be about fairness, consumer and worker protection, and respect for the collective knowledge AI is built on. Sorry if that adds a few roadblocks to the next AI-powered industry-killing machine.
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