The New Amazon AI Image Generators are AWFUL

The New Amazon AI Image Generators are AWFUL Speaker 1: Alexa, play That Amazon Ads Podcast. Unknown Speaker: Which one would you like to hear? Speaker 1: The best one. Unknown Speaker: Okay, now playing that Amazon ads podcast. These gentlemen are completely changing the game. Speaker 2: After listening to that Amazon ads podcast, my ads are finally profitable. Unknown Speaker: I also heard they're pretty cute. Speaker 2: All right, Stephen. So Amazon released this new image generator. There was a ton of hype when it came out that this was going to be game changing for sellers and helping them quickly create content specifically for their sponsored brand ads. So creating nice lifestyle images, taking their product and implementing it into cool AI generated images that they could throw in their sponsor brands, improve click through rates, improve conversion rates, and There was a bunch of hype whenever this first came out. Have you ever actually used this at all or tested this out? Because this is going to be a fun one. Speaker 1: We were at Amazon Accelerate when they dropped this. It went wild. Like immediately, as soon as it was up on the screen, you see everybody in the audience. I mean, it was like 500 people in the crowd pull out their phones. They're taking pictures. They're posting on LinkedIn like, this is such a game changer. It's going to be crazy. And Andrew and I just like looked at each other. We're just like, We'll see. We'll see how it goes. So yeah, Andrew, what do you got for us? I know you've been playing around with this. I did it. I've played with it a little bit. It was pretty bad results for myself. So we'll see what your experience has been. Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. I've got a couple examples lined up here. I basically just wanted to compare this AI image generator to like a ChatGPT, DALI image generator. So we'll look at a little bit of both and get kind of a side-by-side comparison and a couple different examples that we can run through and use the exact same prompt on each of them and just see what they output. Now, I have heard people say that they've used this around times of seasonality where like say you're going into Christmas, they'll take their main images and run it through this and be able to put it on some sort of Like a Christmasy looking background that makes it maybe a little more engaging and more relevant to the timeframe that the ads are actually running in. You know, we can try that too and just see how things go. But first things first, we're going to do a quick example. I got this hammock, this little hammock. I'm going camping here before too long. So just, you know, in the spirit of that, I found a nice hammock that you can hang up between two trees and get some good rest in. All you got to do is you're going to come over here to the creative tool section, go to the image generator, and then all you got to do is add the product. So we'll search for this ASIN and you can do this with any ASIN on Amazon. It doesn't just have to be your own. So if you want to just kind of mess around with it, you can do that. But, um, Anyway, we'll jump into it now and Amazon gives you this little ideas for you. So it kind of creates like a prompt that you could use to help generate something for this, but I had already put one together and this was actually what Amazon had recommended originally. It's not the same as what's showing now, but whenever I first did this, this is what it said to ask. So we're going to say generate an image with this turquoise camping hammock. Suspended between sturdy trees, surrounded by pine forest, fire pit, and winding path to mountain view. Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. Speaker 2: So, as you can see, this has already... Speaker 1: That is awful. Speaker 2: ...generated, and we have these very cartoony, fake-looking... Speaker 1: It's horrible. Speaker 2: ...images that just don't even make sense. Speaker 1: Can you zoom in on that first one? Can you zoom in on that first one? Speaker 2: Oh yeah, happy to. And this is pretty consistent. Oh no. I can't zoom in anymore, but here we go. We can open it up. Speaker 1: Wow. Speaker 2: This is pretty typical. Yeah, I'm on a Mac. Speaker 1: Pinch zoom, dude. Literally pinch your trackpad. Speaker 2: Oh, here we go. I don't use my trackpad ever, so I got my mouse. Speaker 1: What is that? Speaker 2: That is, looks like a spa, like a little day spa. Speaker 1: I'm going to describe this, what we're saying to the listening only audience. So, you know, it's supposed to be a hammock with pine trees, beautiful mountain views. And instead we'd have just like the JPEG of the hammock. And then the hammock bag, for whatever reason, has been rendered all over the place. So you see just the bag of the hammock is just like floating one, two, three, four, five times. It looks almost like some random, it looks like a lantern kind of, and everything's gotten botched. And the upper part is just like a bunch of drapes. First of all, there's not a single tree. It's just like a flat wall with water beneath it that has like some kind of weird. Speaker 2: That's the straps. Speaker 1: The straps are creating a little pile beneath it. And then the whole ceiling is just covered in like tapestry. So it's like an indoor hammock. Pinned against a flat wall above water. It looks like the things that nightmares are made of. That's actually kind of been my experience with like a lot of AI generation is image generation is like it feels like a bad nightmare. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: And it just looks so fake. Speaker 2: Yeah, it does look fake. And you would expect, I mean, I've tried this also with saying like, you know, make it photo realistic, make it look very legitimate, not AI generated, all this type of stuff. You can mess with that. And still the outputs are just very, that's a great one, cartoony. Uh, this one right here, bottom right one. Yeah. Speaker 1: The other one is literally just, it's just a hammock with a bunch of like white ropes hanging. And like all you see is just like these white lines and then just like a picture of a hammock. Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty pretty bad horrible. Yeah, and this is where you'd add some of those themes and stuff Which I mean we can we can try that real quick and just see what comes out. Speaker 1: So the hammocks In every single image that hammock is suspended by nothing. It's just like floating Barely attached not attached to the tree in most cases scroll down though you scroll down there's like there's a beach with now a tree in sight and hammocks just like floating there and. Speaker 2: Yeah, this hammock can be deployed anywhere, anytime. Speaker 1: Yeah, magic hammock. Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll let that generate here and I just want to contrast that just so we can get a reference point for like what a decent output for something like this would look like. All I did was upload the image. I used the exact same prompt and we'll just go ahead and submit that but I've also already done this once so I can show you the output of that. Now, just contrast this with what we just looked at within Amazon. Which one's better? Which one looks more realistic? This one, still like a little cartoony, a little AI generated-esque, but like hands down way better and a little bit better output that might actually be usable and get you a little bit closer to the actual desired output. Speaker 1: Let's see the new one that rendered if it's done. Speaker 2: Yeah, let's see. Oh, relatively similar. Speaker 1: It looks great. Speaker 2: Much better. Much better than what we just looked at. Speaker 1: Add the prompt now. Just say, give it feedback. Say, hey, that looks good. Now make it photorealistic. Speaker 2: I've tried this in here too. It sometimes is decent. It doesn't always work whenever you tell it to be photorealistic. Speaker 1: You can also give ChatGPT the dimensions if you want so it can be like, you know, those lifestyle images for sponsored brands should be like in landscape rather than square. So you can do that. On the Amazon prompt, can you also say make it photorealistic? Speaker 2: Yeah, I've done that before too. Speaker 1: Oh, but you can't like, yeah, it's kind of annoying that you can't give it feedback on what's going on and have it try again. You gotta just like do a whole fresh thing. Speaker 2: You can adjust the dimensions of the image here too. And I don't know exactly how to do that in ChatGPT. I've tried that and I kept like outputting it in a square for some reason. But I know there are some specific prompts, specific nomenclature that you can use to actually get it to do it. But we can try it real quick. So it's like 12. Horizontal. I'll put it in a landscape format. Speaker 1: What was the ratio 1.9 to 1 that Amazon had? Speaker 2: Well, the actual dimensions are 1200 by 628, I believe. Speaker 1: Okay. Unknown Speaker: Something like that. Speaker 2: We'll just do that. Speaker 1: Yeah. Go back to Amazon. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 1: Generate that. See if we can get anything more realistic looking. Speaker 2: I also selected this Christmas outdoor one and that's what I came up with. Some snow covered mounds. We'll take that. So this is one where it came out. We said we wanted it to be photorealistic. Speaker 1: There you go. You got your landscape there. Speaker 2: Close. Did it work? Okay, cool. Yeah, it didn't work last time I did that. So maybe you just got to say landscape format instead of just like the actual dimensions because I think that's what I was trying to do. So yeah, there's this one still kind of cartoony a little bit, but like, I don't know, just much better and much like more closely aligned with what we prompted it and the output that we were actually going for. Speaker 1: The thing is AI gets Ridiculously smarter and better just on an exponential curve. So this is already way better than what we were able to get, at least for Dolly and stuff compared to like a year ago. I'm sure Amazon will improve, but it's, I mean, Amazon's years behind right now. And if you guys are interested in a good, interesting documentary, you can watch the AlphaGo documentary. That was kind of the first real breakthrough with artificial intelligence and lots of takeaways on that one. All right, what else we got here, Andrew? Speaker 2: In the spirit of this podcast, I went ahead and rendered some of a tennis racket just for fun. And to your point here, that the outputs are just getting better and better and like this is moving in an exponential direction. Look, it got Wilson right. Like usually letters and words and that type of stuff. Speaker 1: It can't render them at all. Speaker 2: It can't do it. It's all like jarbled, you know, weird language looks like alien language or something. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: It's getting to the point where it can actually, you know, see and recognize the words and implement them inside of the image, which is pretty cool. Speaker 1: Yeah, I think my favorite About 18 months ago, I was making a post on like revenue per click and I gave it some prompt to like, you know, show some stuff that's featuring like sponsored products. I just gave it the post. I was like, make a graphic for this. And it had so much text and it was just like, sponsored portics. And that's what we typically get. So this is, yeah, huge to get the Wilson thing. Let's see what Amazon did. Speaker 2: So we'll switch this out. Speaker 1: You know what's annoying with Amazon is it is it just takes the main image of the product and just like slaps it on a background. Speaker 2: Yep. Speaker 1: It just like generates a background and then slaps your product on it. Now I do have a client that he has been he's been using Dolly for his sponsored brand ads. And he's taking his product. He's putting it in like a Tron theme. So it feels very like future, like retro futuristic type thing. And, um, you know, they've been doing okay. I don't think they're as good as his normal sponsor brand lifestyle images, but like the conversion rates have been like pretty similar. Cause at the end of the day, I think people are mostly just like the conversion rates just like depends on the product reviews. Speaker 2: Yeah. That and the brand store that you're actually driving it to. Like what's the content like on that? There you go. To your point, Stephen, took the main image, didn't even take the white background off of it. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: Just slapped it on a tennis court. Speaker 1: You know, the best example though, Andrew, was, and this will probably be the last one here. Actually, I'm going to try to find it. You stall for a second. Speaker 2: I did another one too that was like a dog toy and it did kind of the same thing. It was pretty ridiculous. I think overall though, this is moving in a direction where at some point you will be able to do this. Probably not on Amazon by the looks of it, but you will be able to generate really high quality creatives and graphics within AI. Like I said, I don't think it's quite there yet depending on what you're going for, but if you need Quality Lifestyle Imagery. Hit us up. We got a good connection we can put you in touch with and he can get you some really quality stuff done. Speaker 1: Yeah. All right, Andrew. I just slacked you the ASIN, but I want to try this one because before what we were doing, and I just want everyone else to see it so we can laugh together. Before we were, last week we were looking at pet supplies and we put in like, it was like, I don't know, flea medicine or something. And it just had like, The box is like, you know, the size of, I don't know, a small notebook. And the lifestyle image that Amazon generated was like this box that took up the entire backyard, just like the size of a playhouse. Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember that. That was pretty funny. It didn't make any sense, but we got a wisdom tooth panel DNA kit for dogs. So what does this do, Stephen? Is this something you purchased? This is how much you love your dog. Speaker 1: No, I don't know what it is, but because there were phones, like it was demonstrating the app in the main image. I'm curious what it does with like the phones. I mean, it's probably just going to show the whole thing. Now, if you say on a table, that might like shrink the size down for it. I think before the prompt was just like they didn't say anything about the table. So just like that's why the flea medicine was like. You know, just massive because they were trying to fill up the entire space. Speaker 2: True. And I think we had selected like backyard. Speaker 1: I think we did. Speaker 2: Yeah, backyard. So it's just giving you like a backyard and then this ginormous box of flea medicine just sitting out there. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: All right. Here we go. So we did tell this one that was on a white table. Speaker 1: Take out the table and regenerate. Speaker 2: Regenerate. See this one, this one actually looks okay. Like this is not terrible. So maybe, you know, it's a little more dependent on your product and how you prompt it a little bit, but also ultimately these look pretty poor on most of these examples, but yeah. Speaker 1: And this is also not what a good lifestyle image is, right? The whole point of a lifestyle image is to sell the lifestyle. So just showing the box neatly placed on a table does nothing. You want to be showing just a happy owner smiling playing with their dog, especially if it's something pertaining to like if it's dog food or supplements and it's going to be making them healthy. Yeah, that image is that bottom one is just like. You want to take the product and put it- Is there a lawn indoors? Unknown Speaker: Yeah. Speaker 1: A grassy lawn indoors next to a bookshelf. Speaker 2: This is the dog's room. Speaker 1: Yeah. Can you imagine having grass indoors and just all the dog pee that would just reek that room because there's no air flow? Speaker 2: Be rough, be rough. Some people live like that. But to your point, you know, with lifestyle imagery, you want to take your product and put it into a scenario that the customer already sees themselves in. So if it's like you're, you got a dog toy, a ball that you're throwing your dog, like your lifestyle image should be like, you're somebody throwing the ball with their dog in the park, like a lot more engaging than just like, You know, this ball sitting here in this oasis of a meadow here, you know, that's not doing anything for you. Speaker 1: I actually want to do one more example, Andrew, because I'm thinking this is the only where Amazon's taking the actual just main images, slapping it on a background. This is the only example that comes first to mind that I think could work. Go grab a hydro flask just to do Stanley or something. And let's enter that ASIN and the prompt will be Click their ad. Custom. Speaker 2: I never. I can't do it. Speaker 1: Too nice. So the prompt will just be like Hydro Hydro flask in the foreground. And people playing beach volleyball in the background on a sunny day in Southern California. And then we'll give that to ChatGPT slash Dolly as well. Speaker 2: There we go. Speaker 1: The deep research thing is kind of cool, by the way. That new feature that just upgraded. When you click deep research, it basically takes like five minutes to respond. And it's just like, I like that. Tries to think a lot. So I just said, what is the meaning of life? Deep research. Just kidding. Speaker 2: Scouting the internet for you. Speaker 1: Hey, that's not bad. Speaker 2: Hey. Speaker 1: I'm surprised it kept the logo and we didn't even say Hydro Flask. Speaker 2: Yeah, I did. I said Hydro Flask in the foreground. Speaker 1: My bad. Speaker 2: But yeah, it kept the logo. Not quite the same product necessarily. Still slightly different. And sorry, something went wrong. Okay. Let's see. Try it again on Amazon. Speaker 1: Yeah. Andrew, while that's rendering, you had some thoughts around the videos? Amazon AI video, I haven't tried that yet. Speaker 2: It's actually not AI, so I didn't want to dive into it on this podcast necessarily. There is a video builder. Yeah, it's just like a template and it's kind of the same thing where it just like throws your main image into the video and like this weird templated format that's not going to actually convert. Speaker 1: It's like a slideshow. Speaker 2: Yep, pretty much like a slideshow video. Yeah. But while we're waiting, I mean, we can talk about some other things. Yeah, we messed it up. We talked so much trash about this tool. It just stopped working for us. Speaker 1: Yeah. It's like, I don't want to keep up my feelings. I don't want to play with you anymore. Speaker 2: Yeah. One other thing we can talk about is Ways that Amazon's rolling out useful AI tools. One other thing that I've seen, at least in my accounts lately, is this new little business performance insights thing. If you go to the business reports, you can see maybe here, I can just pull it up here. So the business performance insights is a quick little Summary of performance for your account. And this is actually, I feel like a step in the right direction for a practical use of AI that I would actually use that saves a little bit of time and helps you quickly analyze performance on a year over year basis and see what could have possibly changed that is driving performance. So we'll just read through this. In January 2025, your order product sales was 188,000. Less, 154,000 less than last year, or 45% month or year over year drop, you know, units, it gives you average sale price comparison, traffic comparison. And then also at the end here, overall, your business has seemed to have experienced a significant decline in sales and traffic compared to January 2024. And then it's like the decrease in featured offer percentage could also be contributing to the sales decline. So a couple things. Number one, this brand has been a 1P, 3P hybrid for the last like five, I don't know, 10 years, something like that. And they basically got shut down on their 3P account for the most part where they can't really list any products anymore. And so they've been transferring everything over to OneP, where sales are doing great. Overall, this business is up about 45% year over year. It's just this 3P account is showing that it's down year over year. So a little extra context there for some of the decline here. But Amazon AI, obviously not privy to that sort of context. But overall, I feel like this is a step in the right direction. This could actually be useful for just like quickly coming in and spot checking things, seeing year over year comparisons. It's a little limited in that it doesn't adapt to the different date ranges and stuff like that. So it would be nice if every date range that you had set, like if you come in here and do a custom date range, if you're looking at the 6th through the 28th, that this would also update to show an accurate year over year comparison for that time period. This is one application that I feel like is at least moving things in a helpful and useful manner. Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we've said this before a year ago when we were talking about Amazon AI and stuff in some other episode. I forgot what it was, but the key takeaway was that most of the advance in AI has been around large language models, which I just think are fascinating. How much we're able to accomplish with just words because of predictable patterns and all these things. So for Amazon to be able to develop insights and put it using words is very interesting. The analytics around Correlation, causation, data trends, what actually affects ACoS, like why did ACoS go up? Was it because the CPCs went up or because the conversion rates went down? That's one thing that I would be very interested to start seeing these tools do. That's something that hopefully, you know, the end game within AdLabs is that we're going to have that same thing. So, you know, we're going to have some AI chatbot that can analyze your account, audit your account. It's trained on the podcast transcripts and, you know, best practices, SOPs, things that we've written up. So that would be huge if this could actually diagnose where the problems are. You know, if it says the sales are down, you know, 45% year over year, it'd be great if it could just say because of these 3P1P issues, you know, like I just understood the wider, the wider context and everything like that. So yeah. Speaker 2: Or even just give you like a list of like the, the products that were like the most down year over year or something like that. And I mean like ultimate end game is where it could be like, Hey, your conversion rates are dropping because so-and-so competitor is running, running a deal and lightning deals and all that type of stuff. And you know, I don't know who's going to do that, if that's going to come directly from Amazon or if that'll be kind of an external AI company that builds something that, I don't know how they would do that. Not smart enough to know that, but yeah, that would be pretty awesome. Speaker 1: All right, guys, well, let us know what you think in terms of Amazon AI, what your experience has been. If you want to see us be doing more experiments and tests with this, we also talked about doing some tests with the ChatGPT operator, which is $200 a month, and it basically takes control of your Your internet browser and goes around and performs different actions. So we were maybe going to see what we could capture that. So if you would like us to see that, let us know in the comments below. Don't forget to like and subscribe and we'll see you guys next time on that Amazon ads podcast.