The product facts to gather before you ask AI to write

Give the tool your facts, or it will supply its own. Google notes that generative models don't retrieve facts. They predict likely words.¹

The fix is dull and it works: a fact sheet for each product, filled in before you open the chat window.

What the fact sheet should hold

OpenAI's prompting guide says to give the model any additional information it might need to generate a response.² For a product page, that information looks like this.

• Name and type. What the item is called and what it is, in plain words.
• Size and weight. Measured, not remembered. Say which units you use and which side is "height".
• Materials. What each part is made of, as your supplier states it. "Leather" and "leather-look" are not the same thing.
• What's in the box. Every part and accessory, and anything people might assume is included but isn't.
• Colours and variants. The exact names you sell them under.
• Care and use. Washing, charging or storage instructions from the maker.
• Where it was made. Only if you can prove it.
• Condition. New, used or refurbished.
• Stock and delivery. Only what you can actually promise.

Why those items

They match the ACCC's list of things a business mustn't make false claims about. The list includes the quality, style, model or history of a product, and whether the goods are new. It also names performance characteristics, accessories, benefits and use.³

Stock and delivery are on it too: whether goods are in stock or when they may be supplied, including estimates about delivery timeframes.³

The ACCC also says it is illegal to make false or misleading claims about country or place of origin.³ That's the Australian position. If you sell elsewhere, check the rules for your market. If "made in" isn't on your supplier's paperwork, leave it off the fact sheet.

Where the facts should come from

Order of trust, roughly:

• The product in your hands.
• The maker's own spec sheet or label.
• Your supplier's data, checked against the product.
• Your memory. Last, and only for things you can verify later.

A rival shop's listing isn't a source. Neither is an earlier AI draft.

Mark the gaps

Some fields will be empty. Write "unknown" in them. Don't leave them blank, because a blank invites a guess. Then tell the tool, in the prompt, to leave out anything marked unknown.

The ACCC lists "guess the facts" among the things a business shouldn't do.³ A tool that's allowed to fill gaps is guessing on your behalf.

Show one finished example

OpenAI also suggests providing examples of possible inputs, along with the desired output.² Once you have one product you're happy with, keep its fact sheet and its approved description together. Paste both in as the pattern for the next product. The page on writing the prompt shows how to lay that out.

A small template

Keep it as a spreadsheet row or a text file. Each product gets the same labelled fields, in the same order, every time. Same order means you spot a missing field at a glance. When you later do a whole catalogue, the same layout becomes your column headings, which the spreadsheet page picks up.