Send BOBO a photo, a price list or a PDF

Attach a product photo, a screenshot or a PDF invoice to the BOBO chat and ask BOBO to describe it, read the prices, or create products from it.

BOBO can look at what you attach in the chat: a product photo from your phone, a screenshot of a price list, or a PDF invoice or supplier catalog. Click the paperclip next to the chat box, pick the file, write what you want, and send.

An attached file appears as a small preview above the chat box (a thumbnail for a photo, the file name for a PDF) with a spinner while it uploads. Use Remove attachment on it to take it off before you send. On a phone there is also a Take photo button beside the paperclip, which takes a picture with the camera and attaches it in one step.

Can BOBO look at pictures already in my media library?

Yes. Ask "What is in this picture?" for a picture in your media library and BOBO describes it, suggests alt text and tags, and names the main colours. This only reads the picture: nothing is saved until you approve. Asking BOBO to write and save alt text for a picture uses AI credits, and it asks first. See AI credits.

Can I drag a file into the BOBO chat?

Yes. Drag a photo or a PDF from your computer and drop it on the chat box at the bottom of the BOBO panel, and it is attached just as if you had used the paperclip. A dashed box appears over the chat box while you hold the file above it. Dropping it on the conversation above does nothing.

From your media library. On the Media page you can also drag a picture onto the BOBO chat box. Select several first and drag one of them to send the whole selection.
Up to 5 files at a time. If you drop more, the first 5 are added and BOBO tells you.
Photos and PDF only. Other files are skipped with a message. A CSV or Excel file is not read in the chat, whether you drop it or pick it with the paperclip: BOBO answers that a CSV or Excel import goes through the Import button at the top of the products or customers table.
Not while BOBO is waiting for your decision. If an approval card is open, or a file is still uploading, the panel does not accept a drop. Answer the card first.
Dragging a file out of the media library onto your desktop is not supported. Use the download button on the picture.

What can I ask BOBO to do with a photo?

Describe it and start a product. "Create a product from this photo." BOBO says what it sees (item, colour, material, condition), proposes a name and a short description, and asks only for what a photo cannot tell it, usually the price. It shows an approval card before anything is created.
Read the text in it. Labels, price tags, a handwritten list, a screenshot of a table. BOBO reads the text as printed and tells you when part of it is unreadable. It does not guess a size, weight, material or barcode number that is not visible.
Edit it. See Edit a product photo with BOBO.

You can ask a follow-up about the same photo in your next message ("now make it a product"). BOBO keeps looking at the photo for the next few messages.

What can I ask BOBO to do with a PDF?

Attach an invoice, a price list or a supplier catalog and BOBO reads the whole document, including scanned pages, and puts the rows in a table: name, SKU, quantity, price. Then it offers the next step, such as creating the products, updating prices or adding stock, and waits for you to choose.

BOBO reads the PDF on the message you attach it to. In a later message it works from the table it already wrote, so attach the file again if you want it re-read.
A PDF is not a product picture. BOBO does not put a PDF on a product.

Which files work?

Photos: JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, AVIF, TIFF, and phone formats such as HEIC from an iPhone (converted when you attach them). Large photos are fine.
PDF: up to 20 MB. A password-protected or damaged PDF cannot be read. A PDF of up to 100 pages (and about 15 MB) is read whole, scans included. A longer one is read in sections, as text: see the next question.
If BOBO cannot read a file it says so and asks you to send it again. It does not guess what the file contains.

How do I import products from a PDF catalogue?

Attach the PDF and say what to import: "Import all the products from the attached catalogue as drafts", or name the pages ("only pages 5 to 8").

BOBO reads the table in the PDF itself (the header row, the columns and the rows), so it does not retype anything and a catalogue of thousands of rows takes about as long as one of forty.
It shows the mapping it chose (for example SKU, name, price, stock), how many rows it found, and how many lines it skipped (page titles and column headers that repeat on every page), and asks you to approve.
After your yes, an import card appears. Approve it and the products are created, with a progress bar. They are created as drafts unless you ask for active products.

This works for a PDF that has real text and a table with the same columns on every row. A scanned PDF has no table to read: BOBO says so and asks for photos of the pages or a PDF with text. Product pictures are not taken from a PDF, so imported products have no picture until you add one.

What happens with a PDF of more than 100 pages?

BOBO can read it, in sections. An AI model can look at only 100 pages of a PDF at a time, so for a longer document BOBO reads the text of the pages in groups of up to 30, tells you which pages it has read, and carries on with the next group until the document is covered or you tell it to stop. For a supplier catalogue or a long price list it puts the rows in a table as it goes.

This works when the PDF has real text in it (most invoices, catalogues and price lists exported from a program). A scanned long PDF has no text, so BOBO says which pages it could not read and asks for those pages as photos or as a shorter PDF.
Reading a long document takes several steps, so it takes longer than a short one. If you only need part of it, say which pages ("only pages 40 to 80") and BOBO reads just those.
Chat uploads are kept for a few days. If you come back to a long document later, attach it again.

What BOBO does not do with an attachment

It does not change anything in your store without your approval. Creating a product, changing prices and adding stock all show an approval card first.
It does not identify people in a photo. If someone is wearing the item, BOBO describes the item.
It does not copy a competitor's marketing text from a screenshot of their page. It uses it as a reference only.
It does not read Word documents (.docx) in the chat.