AI Tags You Must Keep on Product Images: Google Merchant Center and Amazon

If you sell AI-generated product images through Google Merchant Center, Google requires the IPTC DigitalSourceType tag trainedAlgorithmicMedia to stay in the file and tells sellers not to remove it. Amazon asks sellers to add "contains-synthetic-performer" to the XMP dc:subject field when an image shows a photorealistic AI person. A full metadata remover, StripShot included, deletes both. Clean location data from real product photos, and leave AI tags on the images these channels require them on.

Google Merchant Center: the IPTC tag

Google's Merchant Center rules say: "All AI-generated images must contain the IPTC DigitalSourceType trainedAlgorithmicMedia tag," and "Don't remove embedded metadata tags such as the IPTC DigitalSourceType property" (Google Merchant Center Help, Google Merchant Center Help). This covers the product images you send to Google for Shopping ads and free listings, in the image_link, additional_image_link and lifestyle_image_link fields.

trainedAlgorithmicMedia is the IPTC value for an image created by generative AI. Some AI image tools write it into their exports. If you clean that image with a tool that removes all IPTC data, the tag Google requires is gone.

Google's page also lists compositeSynthetic (a composite that includes synthetic elements) and algorithmicMedia among the source types whose tags should be kept (Google Merchant Center Help).

Amazon: the synthetic performer keyword

Amazon asks sellers to add the keyword "contains-synthetic-performer" to the XMP dc:subject field of images that show photorealistic AI-generated people, in product listings and A+ content in every store (Amazon Seller Forums announcement). The announcement we read does not state an effective date.

Who is exempt

• Real people, even if the photo was altered with AI.
• Images with no people.
• People who are not photorealistic.
• Characters.

Shopify and the IPTC fix

In a Shopify developer community thread about Shopify's image CDN stripping IPTC metadata, Shopify staff said the issue "should be fixed now" (posts on July 27 and September 4, 2026; Shopify developer community). The thread does not discuss EXIF or GPS data, and we have not tested what Shopify keeps today. If IPTC tags matter for your feeds, check a published image yourself.

What a full strip removes

StripShot removes all EXIF, XMP, IPTC and C2PA data from JPEG, PNG and WebP files. It keeps only what makes the picture display the same: the ICC color profile, JFIF and Adobe display data, the orientation and HDR gain maps. The standard clean and the batch cleaner remove trainedAlgorithmicMedia and contains-synthetic-performer along with everything else, so use them on the images that should carry nothing, not on the ones Google or Amazon require tags on. On JPEG files, Smart Strip (a Pro feature under Advanced tools in the photo tool) can keep them if you untick AI Signatures, XMP Data and IPTC; check the result in the metadata checker before you upload.

A workflow that keeps both rules

Keep the two groups in separate folders. Then the real photos can go through the batch cleaner in one pass, and the AI images never do. For the real photos, the GPS and location guide covers what they can reveal. Selling on Etsy too? Its rules work differently: see Etsy's AI rules.

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