Let visitors search your store by photo

With Search by photo, a visitor can send a photo and ask "Do you have something like this?". The agent looks at the photo, searches your connected store and shows the closest products as product cards under its reply, with your store's own names, prices, pictures and links.

What you need

• A connected store with a product search. Connect it with Connect your website on the Actions tab; see Connect your store. Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, VTEX, WordPress sites with a catalog content type and other websites with a search page all work. A site connected only with Browse products has no search, and a blog's posts and pages aren't a catalog, so neither can be searched by photo.
• Let visitors attach files switched on, on the Appearance tab. Visitors send photos with the paperclip, so without it nobody can send one.
• The Starter plan or higher. On Free, the card shows Included from the Starter plan and the switch is greyed out.

Turn it on or off

1. Open your agent and go to the Actions tab. The Search by photo card appears below your actions once a store is connected.
2. The switch is on by default on Starter and higher. Switch it off if you don't want the agent to search your store with photos. It is saved as soon as you switch it.
3. Try it in the Playground: attach a photo of something you sell and ask whether you have it.

The card also reminds you when visitor attachments are off, and shows the limits for your plan and, while photo search is working, how many searches the agent ran today.

Changes to the switch are kept in Settings history.

What happens when a visitor sends a photo

1. The agent decides whether the visitor wants this item or something similar. It is told to leave a photo of a damaged delivery or a question about an order alone. The AI model makes this call, so now and then it may search when you wouldn't have, or ask what the visitor means.
2. The photo is described by the AI model: the kind of product, its main colours, material, style, any brand name printed on it, and three short search phrases. If the visitor wrote which item they mean, such as "the lamp on the left", the description is about that item.
3. Your store's own search is run with those phrases and the product type, up to four searches.
4. Every product that comes back is checked against the description: its title, product type, tags, brand and description. Products that don't match well enough are left out, even when your store's search returned them.
5. Up to 6 products appear as cards under the reply, best match first, with a heading such as "3 products similar to your photo" in the widget's language. The agent introduces them briefly in its reply. If the reply also names other products from your store, they follow the photo's matches and the usual product count replaces the heading.

If nothing in your store matches, the agent says so plainly. It suggests category names it found in your store's results, if there are any, or asks the visitor to describe what they're looking for. It doesn't name products it didn't find.

Only a photo sent with the current message is searched, the first one if the message has several. Photos from earlier messages aren't searched again. A reply runs at most one photo search.

Products are never made up

The cards are built from what your store returned: the product name, price and sale price, picture, stock status and link exactly as your store sent them. The agent's text can't add a product, change a price or invent a link. These are the same product cards as for any other product search, so each card opens the product page in a new tab.

Without a connected store

When the agent can't search a catalog by photo, because no store is connected, the switch is off or your plan doesn't include it, the agent still sees the photo. It says what it sees if that helps and answers from your knowledge and actions. It is told never to invent products, prices, links or availability.

Limits

• The daily limit resets at midnight UTC and counts every conversation of the agent, Playground chats included.
• When a limit is reached, the agent tells the visitor it can't search by photo right now and offers to search if they describe the item in words.
• Photos follow the limits of visitor attachments: images up to 4 MB, not in temporary chats.
• Search by photo isn't an action and doesn't count toward the limit of 25 actions.

Costs

• A photo search doesn't use an extra message. The visitor's message counts the same with or without a search; see Plans and limits.
• Each search is one extra request to the AI model to describe the photo, plus the searches on your store.
• A reply with a photo search takes a few seconds longer, because the agent waits for the results before it answers.

Privacy

• The photo is sent to OpenAI with the visitor's message, as every visitor attachment is, and once more to describe it for the search. It is used only to answer that message.
• The photo stays where visitor attachments are kept: privately with the conversation, shown in your transcript and deleted with the conversation. It is never added to your agent's knowledge.
• The AI model is told to ignore people in the photo: it never describes or identifies a person, and only looks at the item. It is also told not to copy personal details it can read, such as names or numbers on a document.
• The counts on the card store only that a search ran and how it ended, never anything from the photo.

Clicks and counts

The Search by photo card shows the last 30 days: how many photo searches the agent ran and how many times visitors clicked a product card they found. Clicks are counted in the chat widget, not in the Playground, and not in temporary chats.

On the Conversations tab, Why this answer under a reply lists "Search by photo" under Actions called, with Succeeded or Failed. See Conversations and stats.

Next steps

• Connect your shop first: Connect your store.
• Turn on the paperclip: Appearance.
• Compare plans: Plans and limits.