Generative AI is advancing at breakneck pace, with new developments and subsequent dire warnings cropping up nearly every week, it seems. One new application that could prove useful for the promotional products industry is AI-supported image tools for product photography.

In October, Amazon rolled out a beta version of an AI image generation tool for advertisers to generate backgrounds based on product descriptions and themes. On Nov. 1, Google launched its own set of generative AI product imagery tools for U.S. advertisers, according to TechCrunch.

Amazon is launching an AI tool that lets advertisers add backgrounds to product photos, using text-to-image technology.

In a blog post outlining its new tool, Amazon showed how an advertiser could take standalone images of a product set against a white background, and easily create lifestyle backgrounds – popping a toaster onto an AI-generated kitchen counter, for example – without having any technical expertise.

Colleen Aubrey, senior vice president of Amazon Ads Products and Technology, noted that creating engaging product imagery often increases the cost of the advertising process, adding that AI tools are a way to “reduce friction for our advertisers” to ultimately deliver a better advertising experience for customers.

“Providing tools to make image generation simple and easy is another way for us to support advertisers while also making the ads our customers see more engaging and visually rich,” Aubrey said. “It’s a perfect use for generative AI – less effort and better outcomes.”

To use the tool, an advertiser just has to upload a product photo, type in a description of the background they’d like, select a theme and then hit the “generate” button. The image can be refined with subsequent text prompts, and advertisers can also test out multiple versions.

Google’s AI product imagery tools let merchants and advertisers use text-to-image capabilities to create new product imagery for free. “The feature can be used for simple tasks, like changing the color of the background behind the product image or making the background a solid color,” TechCrunch explains. “Or it could be used for something more advanced, like requesting a product be shown in a particular scene.”

Google first announced plans for its new AI-powered Product Studio in May, noting that a skincare company could easily change the seasons in the background of a photo by typing in descriptions like “surrounded by peaches with tropical plants in the background” or “sitting on snow surrounded by pine branches or pinecones.”

Google said its generative AI model can also help improve low-quality images without requiring a reshoot.