Amazon’s New AI Image Rules 2026: What UK Sellers Need to Tag (And What You Don’t)

If you sell on Amazon, you’ve probably heard something about the Amazon AI image rules UK sellers now have to follow. Most of what’s written about them is American, written for American sellers, about an American law. If you’re running listings on Amazon UK, that leaves an obvious question unanswered: do the new rules actually apply to you?

They do. Here’s what changed, what you need to check on your own listings, and why most of the work we do for clients at Products Photography UK doesn’t get caught by it at all.

The Amazon AI image rules UK sellers now face

In January 2026, New York State passed a law requiring advertisers to disclose when an advert features an AI-generated “synthetic performer”, a photorealistic person who doesn’t exist and was created by AI rather than photographed. The law took effect on 9 June 2026.

Amazon didn’t wait to see whether the rule would stay confined to New York. It rolled out a single global policy across all of its marketplaces, Amazon UK included, requiring sellers to tag qualifying images with a piece of metadata before upload. An Amazon staff member confirmed this directly on the Seller Central forums: compliance is mandatory for new uploads, and sellers are advised to update older images whenever they’re editing those listings anyway.

So the short answer is yes, the Amazon AI image rules apply to you on amazon.co.uk, even though the law behind them was written in New York. Amazon has been explicit that the policy covers its worldwide stores, not just the US marketplace, so treating this as “an American problem” is the mistake to avoid.

Amazon had already been pushing its own AI image generation tools hard, reporting that Sponsored Brands campaigns using AI imagery saw meaningfully higher returns. Rolling out a disclosure requirement at the same time it’s encouraging AI adoption looks contradictory at first glance, but it’s consistent: Amazon wants more AI-assisted imagery on the platform, it just wants shoppers to know when a person in an image isn’t real.

What actually needs tagging

The rule is narrower than the headlines suggest. It only applies to photorealistic people generated entirely by AI. It does not apply to:

• Real people in your photos, even if you’ve used AI tools to edit the image, retouch skin, change a background or extend a scene
• Illustrated or cartoon figures
• Characters from film, television or games
• Any image that doesn’t contain a person at all

If your main image is a real product shot of a real model, wearing real clothes, in a studio or on location, AI enhancement afterwards doesn’t turn that into a “synthetic performer”. The tag is aimed squarely at fully AI-generated people, the kind produced entirely by a text prompt with no real photograph behind them.

Image type	Needs the tag?
Real model, photographed, then AI-enhanced (background, lighting, retouching)	No
Real model, photographed, unedited	No
Fully AI-generated person wearing your product, no photography involved	Yes
Illustrated, cartoon or stylised figure	No
Product-only image with no person in it	No
AI-generated background with a real photographed model in the foreground	No, the tag applies to people, not scenery

Why the Amazon AI image rules barely touch hybrid photography

This is the bit most of the coverage misses, because most of it is written by tool vendors selling pure AI generation. At Products Photography UK, the model we use for most client work is hybrid: real photography, shot properly, then enhanced with AI for backgrounds, lighting and retouching. The person in the image is real. They were photographed. AI never invented them.

That means the large majority of the AI-enhanced product photography we produce sits outside this rule entirely. If you’ve been putting off an AI photography project because you assumed the new Amazon rules made it more complicated, for most sellers using a hybrid approach, they don’t change anything.

Where it does matter is fully synthetic model shots, AI-generated people wearing your product with no photography involved at all. That approach has become popular because it’s cheap and fast: no model, no studio day, no shoot to schedule. It’s also exactly the kind of imagery this rule was written for. If that’s part of your listing strategy, the next section is for you.

We’d add one more point here, because it’s easy to miss. Some sellers assume that using AI at any stage of production makes an image “AI-generated” in Amazon’s eyes. That’s not how the policy reads. The distinction Amazon is drawing is about the person, not the process. A photograph of a real person, run through AI tools afterwards for retouching or background work, is still a photograph of a real person. The rule is aimed at people who were never photographed at all.

A worked example

It helps to walk through a couple of real scenarios, because the line between “needs tagging” and “doesn’t” is easier to see in practice than in policy language.

Say you sell kitchenware and you’ve commissioned a lifestyle shot: a real model, photographed in a real kitchen, holding one of your pans. Afterwards, the image is enhanced with AI to improve the lighting, clean up the background and sharpen the overall finish. The person in that image was photographed. She’s real. No tag needed, regardless of how much AI work went into the final polish.

Now say you sell clothing and, instead of booking a model, you generate a fully synthetic person wearing your garment using an AI image tool, no photography involved at any stage. That’s precisely the scenario the rule targets. The tag goes on before upload.

Here’s the scenario that trips people up. Say you take a real photograph of a model, then use AI to swap her into a completely different, AI-generated setting, on a beach that doesn’t exist, wearing a background that was never real. The person is still real and still photographed. The scenery is synthetic, but the rule is about people, not backgrounds. No tag needed. This is the exact case worth double-checking if your studio does a lot of AI background replacement, because it’s easy to assume “AI was involved somewhere” means the rule applies, when it doesn’t.

How to add the tag

If you do have images with fully AI-generated people, here’s the actual process:

• Open the final image file in an IPTC-compatible metadata editor
• Find the dc:subject field (this sits under the XMP metadata standard)
• Add the exact keyword contains-synthetic-performer
• Save the file in a way that preserves the metadata, some export and compression steps strip it out, so check the saved file before uploading
• Upload as normal. Amazon will display a disclosure to shoppers where applicable

The tag needs to survive your full production pipeline. If your workflow involves multiple rounds of editing, resizing or compression, check the metadata again right before upload rather than trusting that it carried through from an earlier step.

The requirement covers more than just your main and secondary product images. It applies to A+ Content, Brand Story modules, storefront images and video too.

You can read Amazon’s own confirmation of the policy, including the official response from an Amazon staff member, on the Seller Central forums. The underlying New York law that prompted the global rollout is covered directly by the New York Governor’s office.

What happens if you don’t tag it

Amazon has said non-compliant media may be removed, and repeated issues can lead to further enforcement against the listing. Given how sensitive Amazon already is about anything that looks like it might mislead a buyer, this isn’t a rule worth quietly ignoring, and it sits alongside a wider UK push towards disclosure the Advertising Standards Authority has been driving on misleading imagery generally. Sellers who’ve built genuinely synthetic model content into their catalogue should treat this as a straightforward compliance task, not an optional one.

What we’d suggest doing now

Go through your existing listings and ask one question of each image with a person in it: is that a real photograph, or was the person generated by AI? For the vast majority of sellers using photography-led, AI-enhanced imagery, the answer will be real, and there’s nothing further to do. For anyone using fully synthetic model images, get the tagging workflow sorted before your next upload rather than after a listing gets flagged.

Three practical steps, in order:

• List every image across your catalogue that includes a person, main images, secondary images, A+ Content and video included
• Mark each one as either a real photograph or a fully AI-generated person, and put the ones you’re unsure about to one side rather than guessing
• For anything genuinely AI-generated, add the metadata tag before your next upload, and build the check into your standard pre-upload process going forward, not as a one-off clean-up

This is also a good moment to think about which approach actually serves your listings better. Fully synthetic model images are quick to produce, but they now come with a disclosure requirement and, in our experience, they’re also the images most likely to look slightly off to a shopper who’s looked at a lot of Amazon listings. Photography-led work that’s then enhanced with AI keeps the realism of an actual shoot, avoids the tagging requirement altogether, and tends to hold up better under close inspection, which matters when a shopper is deciding whether to trust a listing enough to buy.

If you’re not sure which category your existing images fall into, particularly if you’ve commissioned AI content from a few different sources or different suppliers over time, it’s worth a proper audit before assuming you’re fine. Pull together every image with a person in it across your catalogue, sort them into “real photograph” and “AI-generated person”, and only then start tagging. Guessing at scale is how sellers end up either over-tagging genuine photography or missing images that do need it.

Frequently asked questions

Does this rule apply to Amazon UK, or only Amazon US?

It applies globally, across all Amazon marketplaces, including amazon.co.uk. The law that prompted it was passed in New York, but Amazon chose to apply the resulting policy worldwide rather than limit it to US listings.

Do I need to tag images that have been AI-enhanced but feature a real model?

No. The rule only covers photorealistic people generated entirely by AI. A real photograph of a real person, even one that’s been edited or enhanced with AI tools afterwards, is exempt.

Do I need to go back and fix all my old listings?

Not immediately. Amazon’s guidance is that compliance is mandatory going forward for new uploads. If you’re editing an older listing for another reason anyway, it’s sensible to check and tag it at the same time.

What happens if I don’t add the tag to a qualifying image?

Amazon has said non-compliant media may be removed, with repeated non-compliance risking further enforcement action against the ASIN.

Does this apply to video as well as still images?

Yes. The requirement covers product images, A+ Content, Brand Story, storefront images and video.

What if my images were made by an agency or an AI tool provider, not me directly?

The tagging responsibility still sits with you as the seller of record on Amazon, whoever produced the images. If you commission imagery from an agency, a freelancer or an AI photography tool, ask them directly whether any people in the final files were fully AI-generated, and get written confirmation either way before you upload. Don’t assume a supplier has handled this for you unless they’ve told you so.

Can I just avoid using people in my images to sidestep the rule entirely?

You can, and plenty of product categories don’t need a person in shot at all. But for categories where a model genuinely helps a shopper understand scale, fit or use, such as clothing, jewellery or anything worn, avoiding people altogether just to dodge a metadata tag is usually the wrong trade-off. A hybrid approach, real photography enhanced with AI, gets you the model shot without the tagging requirement in the first place.

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Read more about the wider rules on whether AI product photography is allowed on Amazon UK, or find out what AI product photography actually costs in the UK. If you’d like your existing catalogue checked over, our Amazon product photography service covers exactly this kind of hybrid, compliant approach.