Amazon's AI Image Rules: It Is a Metadata Tag, Not a Checkbox, and It Probably Does Not Apply to You

If you sell on Amazon and you have been putting off reading the AI image policy, here is the short version: it is narrower than the coverage suggests, the mechanism is not what most guides describe, and there is a good chance it does not apply to your listings at all.

Meanwhile the rule that genuinely gets listings suppressed has nothing to do with AI, and it has been sitting in the same document the whole time.

Everything below is quoted from Amazon's own Product image guide in Seller Central, checked on 30 July 2026. That article states it applies to selling in the United States. Marketplace rules change, so confirm the current version before making a decision that matters.

Quick answer: what Amazon actually requires

• Amazon's AI rule covers photorealistic AI-generated people, not AI-generated products. The guide says "if your image includes photorealistic AI-generated people, you must tag that image with the appropriate metadata before uploading it to Amazon." There is no equivalent rule for an AI-generated image of a product.
• The disclosure is a metadata keyword, not a checkbox. Amazon says to "use an IPTC-compatible metadata editor to add the keyword contains-synthetic-performer to the dc:subject (XMP) field of your image file." Most guides describe a tickbox. That is not what the guide says.
• Amazon explicitly lists when NOT to tag: images that only feature real people "even if they have been altered with AI-powered tools", images featuring characters from movies or video games, images that "do not feature any people", and images where "the people in your image aren't photorealistic."
• Most product sellers are outside this rule entirely. If your listing images are photographs or renders of an object with no people in them, which describes most catalogs, the AI tagging requirement does not reach them.
• The rule that actually suppresses listings is the ordinary main-image spec. Amazon states that "if there is no main image that meets the requirements, we may suppress the product listing from search until a compliant main image is provided." Pure white background, product at about 85% of the image, no text or logos.

If you only remember one thing: the AI rule is narrow and probably irrelevant to your listings, and the main-image spec is neither.

The AI rule, quoted in full

Amazon's guide introduces it like this:

"Some jurisdictions may require disclosure when product images contain photorealistic AI-generated people. If your image includes photorealistic AI-generated people, you must tag that image with the appropriate metadata before uploading it to Amazon."

Note the framing. This is Amazon responding to disclosure law about synthetic people, not Amazon taking a position on whether AI belongs in product photography.

The mechanism is IPTC metadata

This is the part most coverage gets wrong. Amazon's instruction:

"Use an IPTC-compatible metadata editor to add the keyword contains-synthetic-performer to the dc:subject (XMP) field of your image file. If you include this metadata, Amazon will add a disclosure to inform audiences that the image includes AI-generated people, where applicable."

So compliance is an operation on the image file itself, using an XMP metadata field, before upload. If you are running a catalog at any scale, that is a step in your export pipeline rather than something you click. Any IPTC-capable tool can write the field, and it needs to survive whatever processing sits between your generator and your upload, which is worth testing once rather than assuming.

When to tag, and the longer list of when not to

Amazon says to provide the tag "if your image features people who were entirely generated by AI (not based on a real person)."

Then it gives four situations where you should not:

• "Your image only features real people (even if they have been altered with AI-powered tools)"
• "Your image only features characters from movies, video games, or other expressive works"
• "Your image does not feature any people"
• "The people in your image aren't photorealistic"

The first and third of those matter most in practice. AI-retouched photographs of real models are explicitly excluded, which covers a great deal of real ecommerce work. And an image with no people in it, which is most product photography, is simply outside the rule.

The rule that actually costs sellers money

Here is the thing worth internalising. Amazon's guide contains a set of restrictions that are far more likely to bite:

"Images that fail to meet technical requirements cannot be uploaded to our system." "Images that fail to meet product image requirements or violate our Selling policies and seller code of conduct may be removed." "If there is no main image that meets the requirements, we may suppress the product listing from search until a compliant main image is provided."

A suppressed listing is invisible in search. That is a revenue event, and it is triggered by ordinary image non-compliance, not by anything to do with AI.

The main image requirements

From the guide, the main image must:

• "Accurately represent the product as a realistic, professional-quality image", reflecting "the real scale, quantity, and color of the product"
• "Have a pure white background (RGB color values: 255, 255, 255)"
• "Show the product as 85% of the image"
• Carry "no text, logos, borders, color blocks, watermarks, or other graphics covering the product or in the background"
• "Show the entire product within the frame of the image, not cutting off any part"
• Not "show accessories or any props that aren't included with the product"
• "Only show the product once in the image, for example, front only, and not both the front and the back in the same image"

Amazon also notes that "only a limited number of product types are allowed to have a lifestyle image as a main image."

The technical requirements

• Format: JPEG (.jpg or .jpeg) recommended. TIFF, PNG, and non-animated GIF are accepted.
• Size: "Minimum 500 pixels and maximum 10,000 pixels on the longest side." Both bounds are required.
• Resolution: "Clear, non-pixelated, no jagged edges."
• File naming: product identifier plus variant code plus extension, for example B000123456.MAIN.jpg. Amazon warns the three components are separated by a period and that "spaces, dashes, or additional characters will prevent your image from uploading."

That naming rule quietly breaks a lot of automated pipelines, because generated files usually arrive with descriptive names full of dashes.

What this means if you generate images with AI

The honest read is that Amazon is one of the more permissive marketplaces for AI product photography, and the constraints it does impose are the same ones a studio photographer has always worked to.

Three practical consequences:

Pure white is a specification, not a vibe. RGB 255, 255, 255 means pure white, and generated backgrounds frequently come back as very light grey, or white with a subtle gradient or shadow falloff. It looks white on a screen and fails the spec. Check the actual pixel values on your corners before you upload.

Frame fill is a composition instruction you have to give. Models do not naturally frame a product at 85% of the image. If you do not direct the crop, you will get a product floating in a lot of empty space, which is both non-compliant and weaker on a search results page.

Fidelity is still the whole game. The main image has to accurately represent real scale, quantity, and colour. This is where generating a product from a text prompt rather than starting from a photograph of your actual item becomes a genuine risk, because a plausible product is not your product. If you sell on Etsy as well, note that Etsy goes considerably further and requires original photos rather than renderings, which we covered in the Etsy rules post. eBay and Shopify are more permissive again, and all four are compared in AI product photo rules by platform.

We make a multi-model AI product photography tool, so to be plain about where that fits: the reference-image workflow, where you photograph the real product and the models restyle the scene around it, is the one that survives Amazon's accuracy requirement. Across thirty first-hand category tests, the models differed sharply in how faithfully they held a product, and which one wins depends on the material. If you want the detail, that is in our product photography model roundup.

The bottom line

Amazon's AI image rule is real but narrow. It applies to photorealistic people who were entirely generated by AI, it is satisfied with an IPTC contains-synthetic-performer keyword in the dc:subject field rather than a checkbox, and Amazon explicitly excludes AI-altered real people, non-photorealistic people, and images with no people at all.

If your product images contain no people, which is most of them, you can stop worrying about that rule and spend the attention on the main-image spec instead, because that is the one that can take your listing out of search results.

You can try the reference-based workflow here. Policies quoted were verified on 30 July 2026 against Amazon's Product image guide in Seller Central, an article that states it applies to selling in the United States. These rules change, so re-check before relying on any of it.