AI images in your Google Merchant Center feed: what Google requires and what reaches the Shopify copy

If you show products on Google Shopping, your product images leave your store by two routes: into your own storefront and, through the product feed, into Google Merchant Center. For AI images, Google sets a requirement of its own for the second route, and it concerns not the visible picture but the file: the file should carry a machine-readable provenance entry. This guide sets out what Google requires in its own words, how images get from Shopify to Google, what the Easy AI Act Image Labels test bench measured on the copies Shopify delivers, and what you can do. Everything here is as of 30 September 2026.

What does Google require of AI images in Merchant Center?

Google’s help page on the feed attribute image link [image_link] has its own section, “AI image metadata”. It reads (retrieved on 30 September 2026):

“All images created using generative AI must contain meta data indicating that the image was AI-generated (for example, the IPTC DigitalSourceTypeTrainedAlgorithmicMedia metadata tag). Don’t remove embedded metadata tags such as the IPTC DigitalSourceType property from images created using generative AI tools, for example Product Studio.”

Two further help pages from the same retrieval add to this:

• The page “AI-generated content” repeats the requirement and lists the feed attributes it applies to: image link [image_link], additional image link [additional_image_link] and lifestyle image link [lifestyle_image_link]. For AI-generated titles and descriptions it provides separate attributes (structured_title, structured_description); texts are not covered in this guide.
• The page “Preserving metadata tags for AI-generated images in Merchant Center” is dated February 2024. It states: “Google requires that you preserve any metadata tags which indicate that the image was created using generative AI in the original image file.” It names the same three attributes.

The requirement is therefore Google’s own rule, and it predates the transparency obligations of the AI Act, which have applied since 2 August 2026. Google lists the values it means, each with its own explanation:

The value compositeWithTrainedAlgorithmicMedia, labelled “Edited using Generative AI” by the IPTC, is not on this list. It is written by tools that change an existing photo with AI; on the test bench, for example, by Canva for your own photo with an AI background (measured 1 September 2026). The instruction not to remove anything refers generally to embedded metadata tags such as the DigitalSourceType property.

How Google handles an individual feed image that lacks this metadata is not covered by this guide; Google’s own help is the authority on that.

How do images get from Shopify to Google?

The usual route is the Google & YouTube channel in Shopify, which Google calls the “Google & YouTube app on Shopify”. The Shopify Help Center states: “The Google & YouTube sales channel is managed by Google.” The channel syncs the products that are available to your online store with Merchant Center; according to Google’s help, the app imports your existing product data from Shopify (both retrieved on 30 September 2026).

A feed contains addresses, not image files. The image link attribute holds a URL, and Google fetches the image from that address: Google’s help page on the image link requires the URL to point directly to a valid image file in a supported format, and the robots.txt file to allow access to both Googlebot and Googlebot-image so Google can fetch the images. For images synced from third-party platforms, Google advises verifying that they generate correct image URLs and supported file types.

Which address the channel writes into the feed for an image has not been measured by the test bench. What is on record is where Shopify keeps product images:

• Publicly, via the CDN. Shopify delivers product images under cdn.shopify.com and under /cdn/shop/files on the store itself, depending on the request at full size, downscaled or converted to WebP and AVIF (measured 30 September 2026).
• The stored original, via the Admin API. Shopify keeps the uploaded file unchanged and exposes it through the Admin API as originalSource. On 1 September 2026, 47 of 47 uploaded test images there were byte-identical in file size to the local file, with all 34 markers preserved.

What reaches the delivered copy?

On 30 September 2026, the test bench compared 38 product images whose original carries a marker with the copies Shopify delivers, in a Shopify development store:

The pattern in this series:

• The IPTC entry in the XMP block survived. The five images of Google’s Nano Banana model family (including Cinematic), whose original also carries the DigitalSourceType as an IPTC field in the XMP block, kept the marker in every variant, even as WebP and at 100 pixels wide. The Canva image from a prompt kept it only as long as Shopify delivered the file unchanged.
• A marker only in the C2PA manifest survived no re-encoded copy. This applied to 31 of the 38 images, including ChatGPT, the download from Google Gemini, Flux, Seedream, Recraft and Ideogram: 0 of 31.

For the feed question, this means: the entry Google gives as its example, the IPTC value DigitalSourceType, is exactly the one that survived re-encoding in this series, provided the original carried it in the XMP block. In this series, however, 31 of 38 images carried the marker only in the C2PA manifest.

In the field, the picture is different. In the Shopify AI Image Index (edition 1, measured on 1 and 2 October 2026 across 2,992 Shopify stores with an EU or Swiss country domain), 8.0% of stores had a readable provenance marker on at least one of up to 30 delivered image copies; across all 87,705 copies read, it was 0.7%. Where evidence did arrive, a trial run on 30 September 2026 found it came from a C2PA manifest every time (17 of 17), never from the XMP block alone: when Shopify delivers a file unchanged, the manifest is kept. A missing marker says nothing about whether an image was made with AI.

The two measurements fit together: whether a marker reaches the copy depends on whether Shopify re-encodes the file or delivers it unchanged. When one or the other happens cannot be read from the measurements. And since it has not been measured which address and format Google’s fetch receives, it remains open which of these variants arrives in Merchant Center.

What this means for you: if a verification tool finds no marker on a delivered copy, the image cannot be checked on that copy; that says nothing about its origin. Only the original is conclusive.

What can you do?

1. Keep the original with its marker. Download AI images with the tool’s official download button in the native format, with no format conversion, no screenshot and no compressor in between, and keep that file. Every re-encoding creates a new file: on 1 September 2026, Recraft V4-1 carried a manifest as a native PNG, but no marker as a JPEG download from the web interface. The export rules in detail are in the guide Content Credentials and C2PA.
2. Read the original in the AI image checker. The AI image checker shows whether the file carries evidence and where it sits: in the C2PA manifest, in the IPTC field DigitalSourceType, or in both. The file does not leave your device. In the series of 30 September 2026, only the IPTC value in the XMP block survived a re-encoded copy; a marker only in the C2PA manifest was kept only on files delivered unchanged.
3. Check a feed copy specifically, if you want to know for sure. If you know the image address listed for a product in Merchant Center (the image_link attribute), download the file from that address and drop it into the checker as well. If it finds evidence, that copy carries the marker; if it finds none, that says nothing about the origin. Your browser may receive a different version from Google’s fetch, because the CDN also chooses the format according to the request (30 September 2026: requested as WebP, 5 instead of 6 of 38).
4. Decide on the visible label separately. The marker in the file and the visible label are two different things with different addressees. The machine-readable marker is the responsibility of the provider of the AI system under Article 50(2) of the AI Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689); providers whose systems were placed on the market before 2 August 2026 have until 2 December 2026 (Article 111(4), inserted by Regulation (EU) 2026/1744). As a deployer under Article 3(4), you are responsible for the visible disclosure under Article 50(4) where an image is a deep fake within the meaning of the Regulation. Under paragraph 117 of the Commission guidelines of 20 July 2026, deployers cannot rely on the embedded marker for this.

Google’s metadata requirement is a platform rule, not a label within the meaning of the AI Act. A marker in the feed image therefore does not replace a visible label, and a label that your store displays on the image does not write a marker into the file. Which images need a label is explained in the guide Do I have to label AI images in my online store? For the law itself, see the Article 50 overview.

What has not been measured?

• Which image address and format the Google & YouTube channel passes to Google.
• Whether Google’s fetch receives a re-encoded copy or one delivered unchanged.
• Under which conditions Shopify delivers a file unchanged.
• How Google handles feed images without a marker: this guide makes no statement on that.

Status of all information: Google and Shopify help pages retrieved on 30 September 2026, test bench measurements of 1 September 2026 and 30 September 2026.