Today, Google announced the debut of Product Studio, a new tool that allows retailers to effortlessly produce product pictures using generative AI, at its Google Marketing Live event. Brands will be able to develop fresh graphics via Merchant Center Next, Google’s commercial platform for managing how their products appear on Google.
According to Google, Product Studio allows merchants to produce free product photos and obtain more value from the photographs they already have. You may develop new imagery without having to pay for new photoshoots. A skincare business, for example, could promote a seasonal edition of a product by asking for a photograph of the product “surrounded by peaches, with tropical plants in the background.”
Using Product Studio, a distracting background can also be eliminated. For instance, you can delete the backdrop from one of your photographs and replace it with a basic white one if it has a complicated background. Without having to reshoot a product, the technique can also be used to enhance the quality of small or low-resolution photographs.
Beginning in the next months, retailers in the US will have access to Product Studio. Additionally, retailers using the Shopify Google, and YouTube apps will have access to these functionalities. During a press conference, Matt Madrigal, Google’s vice president and general manager of Merchant Shopping, stated that advanced technologies such as AI have long played an important role in Google Shopping products and that Product Studio brings these types of technologies directly to small and medium-sized businesses.
In addition, the company revealed that it will make it easier for businesses to list on Google in Merchant Center Next. The IT behemoth is making it easier to set up a product feed. Previously, merchants starting up shop on Google for the first time had to manually enter their products, prices, photos, descriptions, and other information.
Google will now automatically add the data it can gather from a merchant’s website to their product feed in Merchant Center Next. The content that is pulled in can be modified by merchants, or this capability can be completely disabled.
By incorporating all insights data into the Performance tab, Google is also making it simpler for merchants to comprehend their performance. With this upgrade, companies will have a single location to review their top-selling items, which businesses appear next to them, and even how customers interact with their nearby establishments on Search and Maps.
“Merchant Center Next will show all products in one comprehensive view for merchants with both online and local brick-and-mortar stores, making it easier to manage online and in-store product inventory together,” the business noted in a blog post. “We’ll also present new insights into the potential benefits of correcting errors in product data, making it easier to prioritize updates.”
Merchant Center Next is now available to new users, and Google intends to begin upgrading smaller firms in the following months before completing the global rollout in 2024. When the new experience is ready for merchants, they will be contacted.
