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AI Product Images: Generate Featured Images for WooCommerce in Bulk - AIWU – AI Plugin for WordPress
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AI Product Images: Generate Featured Images for WooCommerce in Bulk

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Missing product images cost sales. AIWU can generate AI featured images for your WooCommerce products — individually or in bulk — directly from the product name and description. This guide shows how to generate, review, and publish product images at scale.

Before You Start

You’ll need:

  • Product descriptions already generated or written (Auto-Generate Product Descriptions)
  • An image generation API key — DALL-E (OpenAI) or another image provider configured in AIWU
  • Time needed: 10 minutes setup · generation runs in background
  • Plan required: Pro
⚠️ Image generation costs more than text generation. DALL-E 3 costs ~$0.04–0.12 per image. For 500 products, budget $20–60 total. Start with a small batch (10–20 products) to assess quality before running the full catalog.

Step 1: Configure Your Image Provider

Go to WordPress Admin → AI Copilot → Settings → API.

Make sure you have an OpenAI API key set — DALL-E image generation uses OpenAI regardless of which chat provider you use for text.

In the image generation settings, you can also configure:

  • Image Size: 1024×1024 (recommended for product images)
  • Image Style: Natural (photorealistic) or Vivid (more stylized)
  • Image Quality: Standard or HD (HD costs ~2× more)

Step 2: Generate a Single Product Image (Test First)

  1. Go to WordPress Admin → Products and open any product
  2. In the product editor, look for the AI Generate Image button near the Featured Image section
  3. Click it — a prompt field appears, pre-filled with a generated prompt based on the product name and description
  4. Edit the prompt if needed (see prompt tips below)
  5. Click Generate
  6. The generated image appears as a preview — click Use as Featured Image to set it
  7. Update the product

Writing good image prompts:

  • Include: product name, style, background, lighting
  • Example: “Professional product photo of a navy blue leather wallet, clean white background, soft studio lighting, e-commerce style”
  • For lifestyle shots: “A person using outdoors in natural lighting, lifestyle photography style”
  • Avoid: real brand names, real people, text in images (often renders poorly)

Step 3: Bulk Generate Images for Multiple Products (Pro)

Go to WordPress Admin → AI Copilot → WooCommerce → Product Images (or Content Generation → WooCommerce → Images).

Select which products to process:

  • Products without featured images: Recommended — only generates where missing
  • By category: Generate images for a specific product category
  • Selected products: Choose individual products from a list

Configure the image prompt template. Use variables to personalize per product:

Professional e-commerce product photo of {product_name}. {product_short_description}. Clean white background, soft studio lighting, high quality, sharp focus.

Click Start Generation. Images generate at approximately 10–20 per minute.

Step 4: Review and Accept

After generation, a review interface shows each product with its new AI image. For each:

  • Accept: Sets it as the featured image
  • Regenerate: Generates a new image with the same prompt
  • Edit Prompt & Regenerate: Modify the prompt for this specific product and retry
  • Skip: Leave this product without an image for manual handling
💡 Tip: Don’t try to achieve perfection on every product. Accept “good enough” images for most products — a consistent AI-generated style across your catalog looks more professional than a mix of perfect and missing images. You can always replace individual images later.

Verify It Works

  1. Go to your WooCommerce shop page
  2. Products with AI-generated images should now show thumbnails in the catalog
  3. Click into a product — the featured image appears on the product page
✅ Images showing in the catalog? Your products now have visual representation. Even AI-generated placeholder images dramatically improve conversion compared to the default “no image” placeholder.

Common Issues

Problem: “Generated images look nothing like the actual product.”
Fix: The AI generates images from text descriptions only — it can’t see your actual product. Write more specific prompts describing color, shape, material, and style. For products with unique appearances, DALL-E may not produce accurate results — consider using real photos for hero products and AI images for secondary catalog items.

Problem: “Image generation keeps failing.”
Fix: Check your OpenAI API key and billing credits. Image generation is billed separately from text generation. Some prompts are rejected by OpenAI’s content policy — edit the prompt to be more generic if this happens.

Problem: “Images are blurry or low quality.”
Fix: Change Image Quality from Standard to HD in Settings → API. Note this doubles the per-image cost.

What’s Next

Last verified: AIWU v.4.9.2 · Updated: 2026-02-25

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