Questions related to programmatically uploading and manipulation of images through the Commerce API

Through the API, it appears that there now exists the ability to upload images programmatically and determine their order, which can be referenced at the following links:

Zoho Commerce | API Documentation | Add Product Images

and

Zoho Commerce | API Documentation | Re-order Product Images

I've yet to try these, but if they work, this would be a pretty big step forward, as it would finally make it possible to upload product images automatically.

What's unclear to me is the association between images and the product group vs an individual variant. In the case of adding images through the API, does "product" refer to a product group or a specific variant within a product group.

If the former, then it would seemingly be necessary to also provide some means through the API to determine which of the images assigned to a product group are also are enabled or disabled for any of the related variants. However... if a product in this context referring only to a single variant within a product group, then image associations are determined entirely at the variant level. If so then enabling or disabling images per variant would seemingly be a non-issue, albeit a departure from the notion that images in the backend UI are grouped together at the product group level. If the former, then my question remains.

And if images are in-fact bound at the variant level, does this mean that we can (through the API, but not the UI) bind more than 16 images to a product group, just so long as no more than 16 are used per variant?

I ask because it appears that the number of images can seemingly be extended by adding them at the item level in Inventory extending beyond the 16 images available within a Product Group.

-Bryan