Can you license product catalogs for AI?
What to include in a product-data brief: attributes, imagery, taxonomy, provenance, and coverage.
A product catalog is more than a list of names. Descriptions, structured attributes, category relationships, and original images may support tasks such as search or attribute extraction. Buyer acceptance of this category has not yet been confirmed for our referral project.
Describe the structure
List available fields such as product identifier, category, material, dimensions, and language. Explain how images connect to records and whether variants have separate IDs. CSV and JSON are examples of possible export formats, not mandatory submission formats.
Distinguish original and supplied content
A catalog can combine your descriptions with brand photography, supplier specifications, and customer reviews. Document the source of each component. Having access to all these fields in an ecommerce platform does not settle their licensing status.
Show coverage and quality in a summary
Estimate record counts and describe missing attributes, duplicates, discontinued products, and inconsistent units. Buyers may need a particular vertical or language rather than a general catalog. State the actual coverage without inflating the count with variants.
Prepare a description before a sample
A useful inquiry might say: “Original English-language descriptions for roughly 8,000 industrial components, with 30 structured attributes and monthly updates.” This is an illustrative brief, not an accepted inventory threshold or a price signal.