AI Product Descriptions for Shopify — Tune Your Voice

Where to find AI settings

Open the embedded Shopify app, go to Preferences, and the first card is AI Formatting. Below it you'll find Translation and Product Sourcing. Everything in this guide lives inside those three sections.

Settings persist on your shop, so they apply to single-URL imports, the website bulk importer, category-page imports, and the browser extension — there's only one source of truth.

AI mode — Speed / Balanced / Quality

A three-way slider at the top of AI Formatting:

• ⚡ Speed — fastest processing. Best for high-volume imports where you'd rather not wait an extra few seconds per product.
• Balanced (default) — a good mix of speed and detail. Recommended for most stores.
• Quality ✨ — most detailed output. Best for high-value products where the description is the sale.

Pick the mode that matches the batch — you can change it any time and it applies from the next import onwards.

See it in action

Same supplier description, four different tones. The selector auto-cycles; click any tone to pin it.

Title rewrite + your own examples

Rewrite product titles with AI turns SEO-stuffed supplier titles into something a customer would actually search for.

When this is on, you also get a Customize product title format sub-toggle. Turn it on and paste 3–5 example titles in your store's preferred format:

Huawei P50 Pro Smartphone - 256GB Midnight Black
Apple MacBook Pro 16-inch Laptop - M1 Max Chip Silver
Sony WH-1000XM4 Wireless Headphones - Noise Canceling Black

A handful of well-formed examples is the cheapest way to make every imported product feel like it was named by your team rather than by a supplier.

Description rewrite — tone & length

Rewrite product descriptions with AI opens up two sub-controls:

• AI description tone — Persuasive, Playful, Formal, Expert, Friendly, Casual, Technical. Picked once, applied to every product.
• Approximate description length (sentences) — integer. 3–5 reads as a marketing paragraph, 8–12 reads like a long-form product page, 15+ reads like a content article. Use longer descriptions for SEO, shorter ones for catalogue stores where customers scan.

Specifications — format and length

Generate product specifications adds a spec block to the description. Two controls:

• Specifications format — Table (default), List, or Bullet. Table reads cleanest on desktop product pages; bullet is a better fit for mobile-first themes where wide tables wrap awkwardly.
• Specifications length — Brief (5–8 key features) or Extensive (as many as possible). Brief is right for fashion and lifestyle goods; extensive is right for electronics, appliances, and anything where buyers comparison-shop on specs.

You can also pin specific specifications to always include by listing them in the customise field:

Battery Life: Up to 20 hours
Screen Size: 6.1 inches
Weight: 175 grams
Material: Aluminum
Color: Space Gray
Storage: 128GB

Useful for category-consistent stores — every phone gets battery life and storage, every shoe gets material and weight, even when the supplier listing is sparse.

Tags and variant detection

• Generate product tags — adds AI-generated tags to every product. Tags drive Shopify's smart collections, search and filtering, so this is high leverage if you use any of those.
• Import variants (if present) — turn off if you want every supplier listing to land as a single-variant product (sometimes useful for stores that map all variants to a single SKU).
• Variant detection mode — Balanced (default) or Aggressive. Aggressive is for supplier sites where the variant markup is non-standard or hidden — it'll find more variants but may include inferred options. Balanced is right for the majority.

Custom AI instructions

The Custom AI instructions field (marked experimental) is a free-text style guide that gets applied to every AI rewrite. Examples:

• "Always mention sustainable sourcing where the product allows it. Use British English spellings. Never use 'cheap' or 'affordable' — say 'great value'."
• "Write for first-time parents. Keep sentences short. Avoid jargon. Always include one sentence about safety certification if the supplier mentions one."
• "You're writing for a B2B audience of restaurant owners. Skip lifestyle language. Lead with capacity, dimensions, and durability claims."

Custom instructions stack on top of the tone setting — set tone to Persuasive and the instructions to constrain it, and you get persuasive copy that respects your store's voice.

Language — translate every import

The Translation card lets you pick the output language for all AI-generated content (titles, descriptions, tags, specs). Over 80 languages are supported, with regional variants for the major ones — English (US/UK/AU/NZ/CA/etc.), Spanish (Spain, Mexico, Argentina), Portuguese (Brazil, Portugal), Mandarin (Simplified, Traditional), and so on.

This is a deceptively powerful feature: you can source from English-language suppliers (AliExpress, Alibaba, Amazon) and publish in your customers' native language without lifting a finger. Most stores leave it on the default that matches their shop language; multi-locale stores pair it with Shopify Markets.

Playbooks for common store voices

Premium home goods

• AI mode: Quality
• Tone: Persuasive, length 5–7 sentences
• Specs: Bullet, Brief
• Custom instructions: "Lead with the experience, not the spec sheet. Mention craftsmanship and longevity."

Electronics catalogue

• AI mode: Balanced
• Tone: Technical, length 6–8 sentences
• Specs: Table, Extensive
• Always-include specs: power, dimensions, weight, warranty

Fashion / lifestyle dropship

• AI mode: Balanced
• Tone: Playful, length 3–4 sentences
• Specs: off (or Brief + Bullet)
• Custom instructions: "Use British English. One emoji per description, max. Never 'cheap'."

B2B / industrial supply

• AI mode: Quality
• Tone: Expert, length 8–12 sentences
• Specs: Table, Extensive
• Custom instructions: "You're writing for procurement professionals. Skip lifestyle language; lead with capacity, tolerances and certifications."

Multi-language store on Shopify Markets

• Set Language to your primary market's locale
• Use Shopify Markets' built-in translation for the secondary locales — they'll machine-translate the AI-rewritten copy, which compounds the quality vs translating raw supplier copy