Meet Virta: an AI assistant that doesn’t pretend

Shopify merchants tend to have their questions at awkward times: late at night, at the weekend or in the middle of a busy day. Why is the store slow? Why doesn’t the app show on the product page? Roughly what would a new store cost? A contact form answers all of them the same way: “we’ll get back to you”. We wanted something better.

So we built Virta, the AI assistant on merivirta.com. The name comes from Merivirta, Finnish for “sea current”. Virta answers right away, is honest about being an AI and knows when a question belongs to a person.

Why we built Virta

Merivirta Digital is a company of Shopify experts, and every enquiry gets a personal reply. That time is best spent where an expert really matters: understanding the merchant’s situation and finding the right solution.

Virta handles everything before that:

1. Answers right away. General Shopify questions and questions about our apps get an answer on the spot, even in the middle of the night.
2. Gives exact steps. For support questions, Virta gives the menu path one step at a time, for example Shopify admin → Settings → Shipping and delivery.
3. Gathers the basics. What you need, what your store is like and how to reach you. The only required detail is an email address.
4. Passes it to an expert. Our expert reads the summary and replies personally. Virta can give an example price, but the final offer always comes from a person.

Virta sits in the bottom right corner of every page and knows which page you are on. Ask on an app page and Virta knows which app you mean, so you don’t have to start from scratch.

Why we don’t use forms

Our site has no contact form and no calendar booking. A form asks for everything up front and leaves the answer waiting, often before the person even knows what is worth mentioning.

A conversation works differently. Virta answers what it can and asks one follow-up question at a time. By the time our expert reads the conversation, everything needed for a good reply is already there, without rounds of back-and-forth emails.

There is one exception: when Virta cannot help, a short email form opens inside the chat. That way a conversation never ends at a dead end.

How we teach Virta

Virta does not learn from anyone’s conversations on its own. It works from two things we write:

• A knowledge base. Descriptions of our services, our apps and their settings, and example prices. Virta may only say about Merivirta what the knowledge base says. When the answer is not there, Virta says it doesn’t know and passes the question to an expert.
• Rules. Virta never makes up features, numbers or clients, never gives binding quotes or promises schedules, never asks for passwords or other credentials, and never names our clients.

Virta gets better because we keep improving it. We read the conversations regularly, and when an answer fell short or the knowledge was missing, we add to the knowledge base, so the next person gets a better answer. Virta also records requests our apps can’t handle yet, and they go to development as task cards.

Virta’s replies are written by Anthropic’s Claude AI. Anthropic does not use data sent through its API to train its models.

The AI Act: an AI has to say it is an AI

Since 2 August 2026, the EU AI Act has required that people are told when they are talking to an AI, unless it is already obvious. In Virta, you see it in three places: an AI badge in the panel title, Virta introducing itself as an AI assistant, and a note under the message field. Ask Virta whether it is a person and it will answer honestly.

Transparency also means you always see who is answering. When our expert joins, the chat says so, and their first name appears on their messages. When the conversation goes back to Virta, the chat says that too.

Virta makes no decisions about you. It advises and gathers information; offers, prices and agreements are always in human hands.

GDPR: what is stored and for how long

Privacy is part of a service like this from day one, not something added later:

• What is stored: your messages, Virta’s replies, the page you chatted on, the language and a random session ID. Your IP address is not stored.
• Contact details only with consent: email, name, phone and company are stored only if you give them and agree to be contacted.
• How long: conversations are deleted automatically after 90 days and contact requests after 365 days, unless they lead to a client relationship.
• Where the data lives: the server and database run in the EU, in Render’s Frankfurt data centre. Messages are sent to Anthropic to generate the reply, and the transfer is based on the EU’s standard contractual clauses.
• No credentials in the chat: Virta never asks for or uses passwords, API keys or card details, and tells you not to share them.

You can ask to see or delete your data at any time. The details are in our privacy notice.

What Virta will do next

The next big step is customer service for our apps. The plan is for the same Virta to work inside our apps in the Shopify admin, knowing which app and which store the question is about.

Virta will then:

1. Answer users’ questions about the app’s settings and problems, step by step.
2. Collect feedback and feature ideas in one place, instead of letting them get lost in email.
3. Turn them into ready proposals: what is being asked for, why, how many people have asked for the same thing and how it could be built.
4. Bring the proposals to our founder for approval. Nothing is built or promised without a human decision.

The goal is that every question gets an answer right away and every good idea makes it all the way into development. We’ll share more once our apps are in the App Store.

Want to try it? Open Ask Virta in the bottom right corner and ask something about your Shopify store.

Sources

• EU AI Act, Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, Article 50
• European Commission: Data protection rights for individuals
• Anthropic Privacy Center
• Merivirta Digital privacy notice

Have a question about your Shopify store? Ask Virta, and our expert will reply personally.