Privacy & AI Compliance Guide

What to tell your customers when you use an AI chat assistant — with copy-paste templates.

Do I need to do anything?

If you sell to customers in the EU (and in many other regions, including the UK), two rules matter when you add AI chat to your store:

Privacy (GDPR and similar laws): your privacy policy should mention that chat messages are processed to answer customer questions, and name the categories of processors involved.
AI transparency (EU AI Act): customers must be able to tell they're talking to an AI, not a human. StoreChat AI handles this for you — the chat window footer always shows an "AI Powered Assistant" label, and it stays visible on every plan, even with custom branding.

1. Add a section to your privacy policy

Paste this into your store's privacy policy (Shopify admin → Settings → Policies) and adjust to match your store:

Chat assistant Our website offers an AI-powered chat assistant to answer questions about our products, orders and policies. When you use the chat, the messages you send are processed by our chat provider and its AI subprocessor to generate answers. Messages may be retained so we can review conversations, improve answers, and follow up on your enquiry. Please do not share sensitive personal information in the chat. If you contact us through the chat's contact form, we use the details you provide (such as your name and email address) to respond to your enquiry. If you ask about an order, we may look up your order details after verifying your email address and order number or postcode. You can contact us at [YOUR CONTACT EMAIL] with any questions about how chat data is handled, or to request deletion of your chat history.

2. AI disclosure in the chat window

Nothing to do — the StoreChat AI chat window always displays an "AI Powered Assistant" label in its footer so customers know they're chatting with an AI. If you've unlocked custom branding, your custom footer text replaces our brand name but the AI disclosure remains.

We also recommend a welcome message that sets expectations, e.g. "Hi! I'm the [Store] AI assistant — ask me anything about our products." You can set this under Customize Widget.

3. Data handling summary (for your records)

Chat transcripts are stored per store and are never shared between stores.
AI answers are generated by Anthropic's Claude models; message content is sent to Anthropic for processing.
Order lookups are verified server-side (email + order number or postcode) before any order detail is shown.
When a store uninstalls the app, Shopify's GDPR webhooks trigger deletion of that store's data.
Customers can request data deletion through you; contact support and we'll remove the relevant conversations.

This guidance is provided for convenience and is not legal advice. Regulations differ by region and change over time — please consult a legal professional to confirm what applies to your business.