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Google AI Studio
One key from Google, and your site can make pictures for you and draft your replies.
This module holds the key and nothing else does. It uses it for two things:
- Product photography - on any product's Images tab you get an AI photo creation section, where you tick the photographs you already have, say what you would like, and pick from what comes back.
- Suggested replies - wherever this site has a reply box, there is a Suggest reply button under it that offers you three drafts to choose from.
It is not a replacement for a photographer. It is for the shot you were never going to pay for - the same desk in a different room, the chair from an angle the supplier never sent, a square version of a picture that only exists in landscape.
- Install the module from Modules in the admin.
- Go to aistudio.google.com, sign in with a Google account, and use Get API key.
- Paste the key into Settings → Google AI Studio and press Save.
That is the whole setup. The key is stored scrambled, and it is never shown back to you - if you lose it, make another one at Google and paste that in instead.
Google charges for this. Every picture is billed to the account the key belongs to. Nothing on this site will spend that money without you pressing a button, but the button does spend it, so it is worth knowing what Google's rates are before you go and make forty of them.
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Open a product under Shop → Catalogue and go to the Images tab.
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Scroll past the picture grid to AI photo creation.
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Tick the photographs to work from. These are what tell Google what the product actually looks like, so pick the clearest ones. You get:
- This product - the photographs in the grid above. Open to start with, because it is the one you nearly always want.
- Variations - the lead photograph from each variation, if you use them.
- Attribute pictures - fabrics, finishes and the like, if you use picture attributes.
The last two are folded away until you click them - a range with forty variations is a lot of scrolling past on the way to the prompt box. Each heading says how many pictures are inside and how many you have ticked, so a folded group never hides a choice you have made.
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Add angles from your 3D model, if the product has one. See below.
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Say what you would like. Describe the shot, not the product: "the same desk in a bright open-plan office, seen from the side" rather than "an oak desk". The pictures you ticked are already doing the describing.
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Choose how many and what shape, and press Create pictures.
They arrive one at a time. When they have all landed, tick the ones worth keeping and press Add to product images.
With the 3D views module installed, a product that has a 3D model gets a From 3D models button under the photographs. This is the answer to the commonest problem with the whole feature: you have three photographs of a chair, all from the front, and you would like a picture of it from above. Google has never seen the back of that chair and will make one up.
Your 3D model has seen every side of it.
- Press From 3D models. The model appears, and you can turn, tilt and zoom it exactly as a shopper would on the product page.
- If the product has options, use the dropdowns to put it in the right ones - the colour, the size, the finish. The model changes to match, materials and all, so what you are looking at is that particular version and not a generic one.
- Turn it to the angle you want and press Create view.
- Turn it somewhere else and press Create view again. And again. As many angles as you like.
Each one appears under Views you have made, ticked and ready, and goes to Google alongside the photographs you ticked earlier. Untick one to leave it out of this job, or press its × to be rid of it.
They are not saved anywhere. A view exists for as long as you are on the page and goes when you leave it - it never lands in your media library, so there is nothing to tidy up. It is the finished picture that gets saved, if you decide to keep it.
Four honest views of the real product beats one photograph and a lot of optimism, and it costs nothing extra: the ten-picture limit is shared between photographs and views, so pick the ones that earn their place.
With a mailbox module or the contact form installed, every reply box on the site grows a Suggest reply button underneath the writing.
- Open a conversation and press Reply as usual.
- Press Suggest reply. The whole conversation goes to Google, and three drafts come back.
- Click one to try it. It appears in the writing box, exactly where you would have typed it, so you can see how it actually reads.
- Tick to keep it, or cross to take it back out - the cross puts back whatever you had written before you started looking. Click a different draft to try that one instead.
- Edit it like anything else you have written, and send it.
Nothing is sent to anybody without you sending it. A draft sits in your box until you press Send, same as one you typed. Nothing leaves this site until you press the button in the first place, either
- the conversation is not being read by anybody in the background.
The three drafts are deliberately different from one another rather than three wordings of the same sentence, so one of them is usually a better shape than the one you had in mind.
If the last message on the conversation is yours - you wrote, and nothing came back - the button says Suggest a follow-up instead, and that is what you get: a chase, not an answer.
This matters more than it sounds. Asked for a reply to a conversation ending in your own email, a model will cheerfully write one - a reply to you, in the customer's voice, on your behalf. So it is told plainly who spoke last, how long ago, and that it is writing the next thing you send rather than answering the last one. The three come out as a short nudge, a fuller one, and one that gives the customer an easy way to say no.
An internal note does not count as speaking: a colleague writing "chase this on Friday" has said nothing to the customer, so it stays a follow-up.
They are not always right. A model reads the conversation and writes something plausible, which is not the same as something true. It is told not to invent prices, dates, stock or promises, and it mostly obeys - but you are the one pressing Send, so read it.
No button? Then no key is set, or the module is not installed. It appears on a plain reply and on a reply to everybody, and not on a forward or an internal note: those are messages to a colleague, not answers to a customer.
Internal notes are read but never repeated. A note you and a colleague left on the conversation is handed over as context - so a draft knows the chair is the last one in stock - and is marked as something the customer has never seen, so it does not get quoted back at them.
They go into your media library, in the same folder as the product's own photographs, and they appear at the end of the picture grid above - as an unsaved change, exactly as though you had added them with Add images.
They are not on your website until you press Save on the product. That is deliberate: it means you can change your mind, drag them into a different order, or make the new one the cover picture, before anybody else sees any of it.
Drag the new picture to the front and it becomes the cover, same as any other.
Nothing. They are thrown away.
The pictures you did not tick never reach your media library at all, so there is no tidying up to do afterwards. Anything left sitting in a job is cleared out a day later regardless.
Settings → Google AI Studio:
| Setting | What it is for |
|---|---|
| API key | The key from Google AI Studio. |
| How many pictures a job makes | Where each job starts. Three is sensible; you can change it for any single job. |
| House style | The wording added to the front of every product photo job - how your photographs always look. See below. |
| Shape | Square, portrait, widescreen and so on. Square suits most product listings. |
| Size | How big the picture comes back. 2K is plenty for a product page; 4K costs more and takes longer. |
| Model | Which of Google's picture-making models to use. Leave it alone unless Google has named a new one and you fancy trying it. |
| House style for replies | How your business sounds when it writes to somebody. See below. |
| Writing model | Which of Google's models writes the drafts. A different one from the picture model - a model that draws cannot write a sentence. |
Both Model settings are a menu of what your key can actually use, fetched from Google itself, with a Type a name instead link beside it for a model Google named this morning. If the name saved against your site is not one Google offers, the box says so in red rather than leaving you to find out when nothing comes back.
It comes filled in with something sensible: keep the product exactly as it is, light it cleanly, plain background, no text, no watermarks, nobody in shot.
That wording is added to the front of every product photo job, so it is where anything that is always true of your photography belongs - "always on a mid-grey background", "always with a plant in the corner", "never with people in it". You then only have to type the one-off part each time.
You can change it for a single job without changing it for good: open House style under the prompt box on the Images tab and edit it there. That edit applies to that job and nothing else.
It comes filled in with something sensible: warm, plain, British spelling, no corporate padding, no promises the conversation does not support.
That wording goes in front of every suggested reply, so it is where anything that is always true of how you write belongs - "we always sign off as the team, never as an individual", "never use the word delighted", "always offer a phone call if it is going back and forth".
It is about manner, not about content. A house style that starts answering questions - "tell them delivery is five days" - will have that answer given confidently on a conversation where it is not true. What a reply says is the conversation's business; how it sounds is yours.
- It works from your photographs, not from thin air. Tick nothing and you will get a picture of something Google invented, which is unlikely to be what you sell. Always tick at least one.
- If Google is busy, it waits. Google puts a limit on how fast a key may make pictures, and a busy afternoon can hit it. When that happens the panel does not give up and ask you to press the button again - it counts down, tries again, and carries on doing so until it has your picture. Leave the page open and it sorts itself out. There is a Stop button if you would rather not wait, and closing the tab or moving to another page stops it as well.
- Look at what comes back. These models are very good and occasionally very confident about a detail that is not there - a handle that has grown a screw, a fabric with the wrong weave. You are the one publishing it.
- It never touches your existing pictures. Nothing is overwritten, replaced or edited in place. Every picture it makes is a new one.
- No shop, no section. With no Shop module installed the key sits there quietly until there is something to use it on.
- No mailbox, no button. The same goes the other way: with nothing on the site that has a reply box, there is nowhere for Suggest reply to appear.
- A brand-new model is often a busy one. Google names them faster than it builds capacity for them, and the newest is frequently too busy to answer for its first few weeks. If a suggestion comes back saying so, pick the one below it on the list.
- No 3D model, no button. The From 3D models button only turns up where the 3D views module is installed and the product actually has a model.
- Nothing is left at Google. The pictures are sent to make the new one and are not kept there afterwards, and a conversation is only sent at the moment you press Suggest reply.
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