Google has posted a new policy for Google Merchant Center around using AI-generated images. In short, you need to make sure those images have meta data that labels the image as generated by using AI.

“If you’re using AI-generated images in Merchant Center, Google requires that you preserve any metadata tags which indicate that the image was created using generative AI in the original image file,” Google wrote.

Google said, “Don’t remove embedded metadata tags such as trainedAlgorithmicMedia from such images. All AI-generated images must contain the IPTC DigitalSourceType trainedAlgorithmicMedia tag.” Google said you can learn more about IPTC photo metadata.

These requirements apply to the following image attributes in Merchant Center Classic and Merchant Center Next: Image link [image_link]
Additional image link [additional_image_link]
Lifestyle image link [lifestyle_image_link]

Hat tip:

Google has this for image search and AI images – kind of.

I’m looking forward to a standard because I do want to label my images with some sort of tag saying they were generated with AI, but I am not sure what the procedure should be for articles and AI images in the header.

Forum discussion at X.