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Customers can attach photos to any chat message. The AI reads the image alongside the text, so a shopper can send a picture of a product and ask “do you have this?” instead of guessing at search keywords. Image search is on by default for every widget. There is nothing to enable or configure.

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What customers can do with it

  • Find a specific product. A photo of an item they own, or spotted elsewhere, matched against your catalog.
  • Ask about a whole scene. A picture of a room or an outfit, answered with several products that work together.
  • Get recommendations. “What goes with this?” against a photo, answered with compatible items from your catalog.
  • Support with proof. A photo of a damaged item, or of a receipt or invoice, so the AI can see the problem instead of asking the customer to describe it.
The AI treats an image as part of the conversation, so follow-up questions like “do you have it in blue?” keep working without re-attaching the photo.

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Attaching images

In the chat widget, customers add images three ways:
  • the attachment button in the message box
  • drag and drop onto the chat
  • paste from the clipboard
On phones, the attachment button opens the camera or photo library, so a shopper can photograph something and search for it without leaving the chat.

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Limits

Files that are empty, too large, or of an unsupported type are rejected in the widget before any upload starts.
HEIC is the default camera format on iPhones, so photos taken in the chat upload without conversion.

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How images are processed

  1. The widget uploads the file through Molin’s upload endpoint.
  2. Molin stores it and records it against the conversation.
  3. The AI receives a resized copy of the image, at most 2048×2048.
  4. The widget and your inbox display a smaller copy, at most 800×800.
Both copies are generated on demand from the original upload and cached at the edge, so a customer on a slow connection doesn’t download a full-resolution photo to see their own attachment. Support agents can attach images too, when replying from the inbox. Those follow the same path and the same limits.

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Content Security Policy

If your shop sends a Content Security Policy, image search needs no extra origins. Uploads and image display both go through widget.molin.ai, which the documented connect-src and img-src entries already allow.

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Data retention

Images belong to the conversation they were sent in and follow the same lifecycle:
  • Attachments a customer selects but never sends are deleted when they start a new chat.
  • Sent images stay with the conversation history so you can see what the customer sent when you review it in the inbox.
  • When a conversation is erased, either through data retention or a GDPR erasure request, its images are deleted from storage and purged from the cache.

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Frequently asked questions

Image search works in the web chat widget and in the inbox. Photos sent through Messenger and Instagram aren’t read by the AI today. Please give our team a nudge and we will prioritize it for a future update.
Your product catalog, as synced from your platform or product feed. It recommends only products you actually sell, the same as any other answer.
Yes, up to 3 per message. The AI considers them together, so a shopper can send a few references and get one answer covering all of them.
Yes. This is what makes receipts, invoices, and order confirmations useful in a support conversation. Accuracy depends on how legible the photo is.