Product Studio is a set of free generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools inside Google Merchant Center that lets a retailer turn an existing product photo into new imagery: a lifestyle scene, a clean white background, a sharper high-resolution version or a short video. It exists because product listings with more pictures tend to attract more attention, while photoshoots cost money that small merchants often lack. Google built it for the sellers who feed product data into Merchant Center, the console behind Shopping ads and free listings, and the outputs can be saved straight back onto a product as its main or additional image.

How Product Studio works

The tool sits on the Products page of Merchant Center under a Product Studio tab. First use requires accepting separate Product Studio Additional Terms. According to Google's Merchant Center Help page on Product Studio, as of October 2026 the interface offers six functions:

  • Change background generates a new scene around a product from a text description and returns four candidate images.
  • Remove background strips the setting and leaves the product on white.
  • Increase resolution enlarges and sharpens a small or blurred photo.
  • Animate images turns a still into short AI video clips, four per run.
  • Generate video builds product videos from several images.
  • Create images produces or edits pictures from prompts, optionally starting from up to three uploaded JPEG or PNG files or an existing Merchant Center product.

A merchant selects a product, types a prompt such as a bottle "surrounded by peaches, with tropical plants in the background" (the example Google used at launch), reviews the four outputs and either downloads one or adds it to the listing. Google says the tools work best with a single, centred product on a mostly white canvas and no people or animals in the frame. Help documentation lists hands, wall art and light fixtures as unsupported subjects, and excludes regulated goods, including alcohol, pharmaceuticals, gambling products, weapons, tobacco, fireworks and medical devices.

There are practical ceilings too. A product holding 70 images cannot accept another, and only the 20 most recent scenes are kept, on the user's device. Prompts work best in ten languages: Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

Programmatic access runs through the Merchant API. Its productstudio v1alpha package, according to Google's API reference, exposes three services. An ImageService offers background generation, background removal and upscaling; a TextSuggestionsService drafts titles and descriptions, with a workflow_id field set to "title", "description" or "tide" and a tone field accepting playful, formal, persuasive or conversational; and a VideosService creates either composite videos from templates such as MOVING_GRID or PRODUCT_CARDS, or roughly six-second animations of a still image using ZOOM_IN, ZOOM_OUT or CIRCULAR_DOLLY camera moves. Text generation exists only through this route.

Labelling what the machine made

Generated pictures carry disclosure obligations. On February 19, 2024, Google required AI-generated product images to carry the IPTC trainedAlgorithmicMedia metadata tag in the image_link, additional_image_link and lifestyle_image_link attributes, and barred merchants from stripping it. The International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) DigitalSourceType vocabulary also accepts compositeSynthetic and algorithmicMedia values, according to Google's AI-generated content Help page, which explicitly names Product Studio as a tool whose embedded tags must not be removed. Because a text field cannot carry embedded metadata, the product data specification added structured title and structured description attributes in April 2024, each with a digital_source_type sub-attribute set to trained_algorithmic_media.

A second layer arrived on July 9, 2026, when Google added an AI label setting across five products, Merchant Center among them. The "Manage AI label" control appears automatically when assets come out of Product Studio. Google also embeds SynthID, its imperceptible watermark, and Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) metadata in images and video generated within its ads tools, though that coverage did not explicitly confirm the same treatment for Merchant Center outputs, and the Product Studio Help page does not mention SynthID at all.

Origin and evolution

Matt Madrigal, Google's vice president and general manager of Merchant Shopping, announced Product Studio at Google Marketing Live on May 23, 2023. The pitch rested on a single statistic: according to Google data dated April 6, 2023, offers with more than one image saw 76% more impressions and 32% more clicks. The launch followed on November 1, 2023, when Google rolled Product Studio out to all Merchant Center Next users in the US and to merchants using the Google & YouTube app on Shopify. Tony Ouyang, co-founder of skincare company Doppeltree, said in that coverage that the tool "allowed us to diversify our product imagery, and produce high quality images in a fraction of the time."

Expansion came in stages. Google added Australia and Canada on March 26, 2024, English prompts only, then the UK, India and Japan in June 2024, alongside direct image uploads and seasonal scene themes. Merchant Center Next, the only version that hosted the tool, became compulsory when Google completed the global rollout in August 2024.

Video followed. At its Think Retail event, Google said merchants could generate videos from product images starting in September 2024; the US-only feature accepted JPEG and PNG files and could take up to ten minutes per clip. On December 10, 2024, Google extended the image tools to 15 more markets, from the Czech Republic to Ukraine, taking the total to 30. As of October 2026, the Help page lists availability for every Merchant Center user except those based in Russia and France, while Generate video remains limited to six countries: Australia, Canada, India, Japan, the UK and the US.

Developer access opened when Product Studio entered the Merchant API in alpha in April 2025, with the image resource gated behind a request form. In December 2025, according to Search Engine Land, Google added animation, background removal and upscaling on top of image generation, a change first spotted by PPC specialist Vojtech Audy. In July 2026 Google dropped the "Next" from Merchant Center's name.

Why it matters for marketers

Product Studio moves image production upstream, into the data source that feeds Shopping ads, free listings and Performance Max. Since July 2024, advertisers have been able to import Merchant Center images, including Product Studio creations, into the Google Ads image editor, so a scene generated for a listing can reappear in campaign assets. Google's own numbers frame the case: 80% of US users it surveyed in March 2024 reported realised or expected workflow gains, and a Google case study cited by PPC Land credited merchant Wuitusu with a 95% year-on-year click-through rate increase and a 75% lower cost per click from scene-generated imagery. Both figures are self-reported by Google and have not been independently audited.

Comparable tools appeared within weeks of each other. Meta made background generation, image expansion and text variations available to all advertisers on October 4, 2023, according to SiliconANGLE. Amazon began testing AI image generation in late October 2023, claiming lifestyle images in Sponsored Brands ads could lift click-through rates by up to 40%. Shopify added AI background removal and replacement to its Shopify Magic media editor on March 8, 2024, according to the Shopify changelog. Product Studio differs mainly in living inside a product data console rather than an ad builder or storefront.

Limitations and disputes

The tool remains labelled experimental, and Google warns it "may produce unexpected results." The excluded subjects rule out much of fashion and furniture photography. Google's quality reviewers may view original images, outputs and prompts. Regional gaps persist, including an unexplained exclusion of France-based accounts and video generation in only six countries.

Accuracy is the deeper risk. A generated scene can misstate size, colour or included accessories, which collides with Google's product data rules on representing items faithfully. The danger is not theoretical across the industry: in June 2026 REI said Meta had auto-enrolled it in an AI tool that deformed a bicycle in an Instagram ad. Product Studio requires a merchant to choose each output, which lowers that exposure, but nothing in Merchant Center checks a generated image against the physical product. Disclosure is fragile too: many editing tools strip IPTC tags when re-saving files.

The underlying model is another open question. Google's Product Studio documentation does not name it. Google Ads' separate creative workspace, by contrast, runs on Imagen 4 and Veo and later Nano Banana Pro; any assumption that Product Studio shares them is inference, not disclosure.

Not the same as

  • Asset Studio is the creative workspace inside Google Ads, built for campaign assets rather than product listings, and announced at Google Marketing Live in May 2025.
  • Google AI Studio is a developer playground for testing Gemini models and issuing API keys.
  • Pomelli is a Google Labs experiment, launched in October 2025 with Google DeepMind, that builds a "Business DNA" brand profile from a website and generates social and marketing content. Its Photoshoot feature, added in February 2026, also restages product photos, but outside Merchant Center.
  • Amazon AI Creative Studio, launched in beta in October 2024, is Amazon's ad creative tool and shares only the naming convention.

Recent developments

In 2026, plumbing and disclosure have mattered more than new features. The Content API for Shopping was set to shut on August 18, 2026, leaving the Merchant API, generally available since July 2025, as the only programmatic route. The July 2026 label setting tied Product Studio outputs to Google's wider AI disclosure regime ahead of EU transparency obligations applying from August 2, 2026. Whether video will reach more countries, or the models will be named, remains unannounced as of October 2026.

Timeline

  • April 6, 2023: Google data shows multi-image offers gaining 76% more impressions and 32% more clicks
  • May 23, 2023: Product Studio announced at Google Marketing Live
  • October 4, 2023: Meta opens generative background and image expansion tools to all advertisers
  • Late October 2023: Amazon begins testing AI image generation for advertisers
  • November 1, 2023: Product Studio launches for all US Merchant Center Next users and Shopify's Google & YouTube app
  • February 19, 2024: Merchant Center requires the IPTC trainedAlgorithmicMedia tag on AI-generated images
  • March 8, 2024: Shopify adds AI backgrounds to its media editor
  • March 26, 2024: Product Studio reaches Australia and Canada
  • April 2024: Structured title and structured description attributes added for AI-generated text
  • June 2024: Expansion to the UK, India and Japan, with direct uploads and seasonal themes
  • August 2024: Merchant Center Next rollout completed globally
  • September to October 2024: Video generation launches for US merchants
  • December 10, 2024: 15 more markets added, for a total of 30
  • April 2025: Product Studio enters the Merchant API in alpha
  • July 2025: Merchant API v1 becomes generally available
  • October 2025: Google Labs launches Pomelli
  • December 17, 2025: Animate, remove background and increase resolution added to Product Studio
  • February 2026: Pomelli adds Photoshoot
  • July 2026: Merchant Center drops "Next" from its name
  • July 9, 2026: Manage AI label setting added to Merchant Center and four other Google products
  • August 18, 2026: Content API for Shopping shutdown date

Summary

Who. Google operates Product Studio for merchants using Merchant Center and Shopify's Google & YouTube app. Matt Madrigal announced it; Amazon, Meta and Shopify run comparable tools.

What. A free suite of generative AI tools that creates product scenes, removes backgrounds, upscales images, animates stills and generates videos, with text suggestions available through the Merchant API.

When. Announced on May 23, 2023, launched in the US on November 1, 2023, extended to 30 markets by December 2024, opened to developers in April 2025 and tied to Google's AI label setting on July 9, 2026.

Where. Inside Merchant Center's Products page and the Merchant API, available as of October 2026 to all Merchant Center users except those based in Russia and France, with video limited to six countries.

Why. Google argues that more images bring more impressions and clicks, and that small merchants cannot afford photoshoots. Accuracy, disclosure and undisclosed models remain the main points of contention.