AI Won't Kill SaaS
InfoWorld, Tuesday, September 8th, 2026
Cheap code generation makes SaaS platforms more extensible rather than replaceable, as Shopify's Sidekick shows.
Rather than displacing packaged software, cheap AI code generation gives SaaS platforms a route to customer-built extensibility.
Shopify's Sidekick lets merchants describe a custom tool and generates an application wired to the Admin API; nearly 4,000 apps were created in the three weeks after launch.
That lets customers close gaps without replacing core functionality, which increases stickiness rather than reducing it.
The counterweight is that generated extensions remain dependent on the host platform, and vendors face internal tension between enabling customization and protecting premium feature revenue.