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Can you use AI images commercially? Terms, copyright and platform rules

Usually, yes: every AI image generator we checked allows commercial use on at least some plans, with conditions on some free plans and, at Midjourney, for larger companies. Copyright is a separate question. In the US, the Copyright Office says an image made from a prompt alone isn't protected by copyright, so you may not be able to stop others reusing it, and no tool's terms clear a logo, a real person or a character that appears in the image.

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Can I use AI-generated images commercially?

Three separate questions decide it: what the tool's terms allow on your plan, whether anyone holds copyright in the image, and whether the image uses something that belongs to someone else. Where you publish can add a fourth: the platform's own disclosure rules.

This post is general information, not legal advice. Laws differ between countries and are still changing. For high-stakes uses, such as a logo, a product range, a book cover or a large ad campaign, talk to a lawyer where you live.

  • The tool's terms. A contract between you and the tool: it says whether you may use images commercially, who owns them and whether your plan matters. Each tool's terms
  • Copyright in the image. This mostly decides whether you can stop other people copying it, and it differs by country. Are AI images copyrighted?
  • Other people's rights. Trademarks, a real person's likeness or a copyrighted character can make an image a problem whatever the terms and copyright say. Risks beyond copyright
  • Platform rules. YouTube, Etsy, Amazon KDP and stock sites each have their own rules on AI images. Platform rules

AI image generator commercial use: each tool's terms

Every tool we checked allows commercial use on at least some plans. What differs is who owns the images, what free plans allow and which conditions apply. Here is what each tool's own pages say.

Swipe the table sideways to see all columns.

What each AI image generator's terms say about using its images
ToolUsing the images
AIPhoto-GeneratorWe don't claim ownership of your images; use is subject to our Terms and the model provider's termsSource: Terms
Leonardo AILeonardo owns free-plan outputs, though its pricing FAQ grants free users a commercial license; paid users own theirsSource: leonardo.ai
MidjourneyYou own what you create; companies over $1M revenue need Pro or MegaSource: docs.midjourney.com
DeepAIIts terms say you own your outputs and may use them commercially, but also say generated content has no copyright; its image page calls outputs public domainSource: deepai.org
PerchanceUse images however you want, with no attribution, per its terms FAQSource: perchance.org
Raphael AIFree use is personal and non-commercial only; paid subscribers may use images commerciallySource: raphael.app
IdeogramDoesn't claim ownership of outputs or restrict using them, commercially includedSource: ideogram.ai
Adobe FireflyAdobe says outputs of its own models can be used commercially; partner outputs are your callSource: adobe.com
CanvaYou own your output and may use it for any lawful purpose, per its AI termsSource: canva.com
CraiyonCommercial use allowed on every account; if you aren't a subscriber, you must credit Craiyon in text alongside any image you use commerciallySource: craiyon.com
NightCafeRights in your artwork pass to you, for personal or commercial useSource: creator.nightcafe.studio
ChatGPTYou own the output, as between you and OpenAI; output may not be uniqueSource: openai.com

Facts about each tool come from its own public pages, last checked . Tool names are trademarks of their owners; we aren't affiliated with them.

ChatGPT's facts were checked on . On we also rechecked the terms of Midjourney, Adobe Firefly, Canva and Leonardo AI quoted below.

  • ChatGPT (OpenAI). OpenAI's Terms of Use say that, as between you and OpenAI and to the extent the law allows, you own the output, and OpenAI assigns you any rights it has in it. They also say output may not be unique, and that you may not present output as human-generated when it wasn't. (source) OpenAI's ChatGPT help adds that owning the output includes the right to reprint, sell and merchandise it, on free or paid plans. (source) Users in the EEA, Switzerland and the UK have their own version of the terms with the same ownership wording. (source)
  • Midjourney. Its terms say you own what you create “to the fullest extent possible under applicable law”, subject to its terms and to other people's rights, with exceptions: a company, or an employee of a company, with more than $1,000,000 a year in revenue must be on the Pro or Mega plan to own its images, and images you upscale from other users stay theirs. (sources: 1, 2) Its current terms don't set separate rules for free use, and there's no free plan or trial on its website or in Discord. (source)
  • Adobe Firefly. Adobe says outputs of its own Firefly models can be used for commercial purposes, but that you're responsible for deciding whether content from partner models is appropriate for your project. Eligible enterprise customers can also get IP indemnification for select Firefly outputs. (source)
  • Canva. Canva's AI Product Terms say that, as far as the law allows, you own your output, though if it edits or includes content from Canva's library, your ownership is subject to the license for that content. You may use your output for any lawful purpose, at your own risk. They also say outputs may not be unique. (source)
  • Leonardo AI. Paid subscribers own their images and can use them commercially. On the free plan, Leonardo owns the images, as its terms and pricing FAQ both say, and the pricing FAQ gives free users a non-exclusive license to use them for commercial purposes. (sources: 1, 2)

Free plans are where terms differ most. Craiyon's terms say that if you aren't a subscriber, you must credit Craiyon in text alongside any image you use commercially (source), and Raphael AI's limit free images to personal, non-commercial use. (source)

Where OpenAI, Midjourney, Canva and Leonardo grant ownership, they do so only as far as the law allows, which is why the copyright rules below still matter. (sources: 1, 2, 3, 4) And when a tool runs another company's model, that model provider's terms can apply too, as they do on AIPhoto-Generator.

Are AI images copyrighted?

It depends on the country and on how much of the image a person made. In the US, the Copyright Office says an image generated from a prompt alone isn't protected by copyright. The UK still has a rule for computer-generated works, which the UK government proposed removing in March 2026. EU law and a Beijing court both look for a person's own creative choices.

  • United States. The US Copyright Office's March 2023 guidance says copyright can protect only material that is “the product of human creativity”, and that when AI receives only a prompt, the prompt works “more like instructions to a commissioned artist”. (source) Its January 2025 report concludes that, with current generally available technology, “prompts alone do not provide sufficient human control” to make users the authors of the output. (source) In 2023 it limited the registration of the comic book Zarya of the Dawn to its text and the way its words and pictures were selected and arranged, leaving out the Midjourney images themselves. (source) In Thaler v. Perlmutter, where an application named an AI system as the sole author, a federal appeals court held in March 2025 that the Copyright Act requires work to be authored “in the first instance by a human being” (source), and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case on 2 March 2026. (source) The court didn't decide how much human input is enough, and the Office says the courts will give further guidance on how the human authorship requirement applies to specific uses of AI. (sources: 1, 2)
  • What US copyright can still cover. The same report says using AI to assist rather than stand in for human creativity doesn't affect protection, and that copyright covers your own work where it's perceptible in the output, a creative selection or arrangement of material, and creative changes you make to the output. The AI-generated material itself stays unprotected. (source) If you register such a work, you must disclose the AI-generated content and briefly explain your own contribution. (source)
  • United Kingdom. The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 gives computer-generated works, meaning works with no human author, an author: “the person by whom the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work are undertaken”. Their copyright lasts 50 years from the end of the year they were made. (sources: 1, 2, 3) In a report published on 18 March 2026, the UK government proposed removing this protection “in the absence of evidence of its ongoing value”, while keeping protection for works created with AI assistance. (source) That's a proposal, not a change in the law: when we checked on 12 October 2026, the official legislation site showed no outstanding amendments to section 9. (source)
  • European Union. The EU's Court of Justice treats something as a work only if it is “the author's own intellectual creation”, which means it reflects the author's personality “as an expression of his free and creative choices”. (source) That test dates from before today's image generators, and it turns on an author's own choices.
  • China. In one of its typical cases of 2023, the Beijing Internet Court held that an AI image was a work and that the person who made it was its author, because they had made “a certain intellectual input”, such as selecting prompt words, arranging their order and setting parameters. It also said AI models themselves can't be authors under China's Copyright Law. (source) In a case it reported in November 2025, the same court fined a plaintiff 10,000 yuan for false claims about an AI-generated picture, and its judge said that in court, creators and those who acquire copyright should state truthfully whether a work is generated by AI. (source)

Are AI-generated images public domain?

Not in a simple “free for anyone” sense. Where an image has no copyright, as the US Copyright Office says of prompt-only images, no one can claim copyright in it; people often call that public domain. Other rules still apply.

  • The tool's terms still bind you. They're a contract, so conditions such as Midjourney's revenue rule or Raphael AI's non-commercial free plan apply whether or not the image has copyright. (sources: 1, 2)
  • Others may be able to reuse it. If your image has no copyright, you may not be able to stop someone else copying it. That matters most for a logo, a mascot or a product design built on an image straight from a generator.
  • Someone else's rights can still be in it. A trademark, a real person's likeness or a copyrighted character in the image isn't cleared by the image lacking copyright of its own. See the next section.
  • Other countries differ. The UK's rule for computer-generated works and the Beijing court's decision both mean AI images may be protected elsewhere. (sources: 1, 2)

“Public domain” is about copyright. If you're asking whether other people can see the images you make, that's a privacy setting, and it differs by tool: see are your AI images public?

Risks that don't depend on copyright

Even when you're allowed to use an image and no one holds copyright in it, what the image shows can still belong to someone else. These risks have nothing to do with copyright in the image itself.

  • Trademarks and logos. The USPTO describes trademark infringement as using someone's mark on or with goods or services in a way “likely to cause confusion, deception, or mistake” about where they come from. (source) Image models can add brand-like marks you didn't ask for, so check products, signs and screens; our stock photo guide shows one we caught.
  • Real people. Many US states protect a person's name and likeness. California's Civil Code section 3344, for example, makes anyone who knowingly uses another person's name, voice, signature, photograph or likeness on products, or to advertise or sell them, without consent liable for damages of at least $750. (source) The US Copyright Office describes the state laws as “a patchwork of protections”. (source)
  • Characters and artwork. Under US law, only the copyright owner may make, or authorize, an adaptation of a work, and an unauthorized adaptation may be infringement. (source) A prompt that names a character can produce exactly that, which is why our rules don't allow images that infringe intellectual property, including copyrighted characters, and Adobe Stock bans fictional characters' names in prompts. (source)
  • Similar images for others. OpenAI's and Canva's terms both say output may not be unique and other users may get similar results, so don't count on an AI image being yours alone. (sources: 1, 2)
  • Passing it off as human-made. OpenAI's terms say you may not “represent that Output was human-generated when it was not”, and Canva's AI terms have a similar rule. (sources: 1, 2)

Our Acceptable Use Policy doesn't allow images that infringe intellectual property, including copyrighted characters and artwork, trademarks, logos and brand packaging, or that depict real, identifiable people in a misleading, sexual, defamatory or harmful way.

Using AI images on your website, YouTube, Etsy or Amazon

Platforms add their own rules on top of the law, mostly about telling people an image was made with AI. Here is what each one's own pages say.

  • Your own website or client work. No platform rule applies, so the tool's terms, the risks above and any laws that require disclosure are what matter. Ad platforms can have their own rules: Google Ads, for example, requires advertisers to disclose election ads that contain synthetic or digitally altered content. (source) Don't present an AI image as a real photo of a real person, event or product where that would mislead; our guide to labeling AI images has examples.
  • YouTube. YouTube requires creators to disclose AI-generated or altered content that seems realistic, but not non-realistic content or production help such as an AI-made thumbnail. Creators who consistently don't disclose may get a label added, have content removed or be suspended from the YouTube Partner Program. (source) For thumbnail sizes, see our YouTube thumbnail generator.
  • Etsy. Etsy's Creativity Standards count seller-prompted AI creations as items designed by the seller, and say sellers “must disclose within their listing description” if an item was created with AI. (source)
  • Amazon KDP. Kindle Direct Publishing requires you to tell it about AI-generated text, images or translations, including cover and interior images, when you publish or republish a book, even if you edited them heavily afterwards. Content you made yourself and only refined with AI tools doesn't need disclosing. Authors are also responsible for not breaking copyright, trademark, privacy or publicity rights. (source)
  • Adobe Stock. Contributors must have the rights to submit generative AI content, including checking the AI tool's terms, must tick “Created using generative AI tools” for all of it, and mustn't put names of artists, real people or fictional characters in prompts, titles or keywords. Content portraying an identifiable person needs a model release. (source)

A checklist before you use an AI image commercially

These checks take a few minutes and cover the problems above. For anything you'll build a business on, add a conversation with a lawyer.

  • Read the terms for the plan you're on: commercial use, ownership, and any conditions such as revenue limits, attribution or free-plan restrictions.
  • If the tool runs another company's model, check whether that provider's terms apply too.
  • Zoom in for logos, brand names, lettering and signatures, and regenerate or edit them out.
  • Keep real people, named characters and artists' names out of prompts unless you have the rights.
  • Check the disclosure rules where you'll publish: YouTube, Etsy, Amazon KDP and stock sites each have their own.
  • Keep a note of the tool, plan, date and prompt, in case a platform, client or registration form asks how an image was made.
  • If you need to stop others copying it, as with a logo, mascot or book cover, ask a lawyer how to protect it.

Using AIPhoto-Generator images commercially

We don't claim ownership of the images you generate. Your rights to use them are subject to our Terms and to the terms of the AI model provider, which may change, and copyright protection for AI-generated images varies by country and may not be available.

Before using an image commercially, our Terms of Service ask you to make sure your use complies with them, the provider's terms and applicable law. Similar prompts may produce similar images for other people, and you're responsible for reviewing each image before you use or publish it.

Our Acceptable Use Policy says to use AIPhoto-Generator to make new images for creative, personal and business work. It rules out images that infringe intellectual property, including copyrighted characters and artwork, trademarks, logos and brand packaging, and images that depict real, identifiable people in a misleading, sexual, defamatory or harmful way, and it asks you to label AI images where the platform or context requires it. We don't add a visible watermark.

AIPhoto-Generator works from a text prompt only, with no photo upload or editing. In the US Copyright Office's terms, that makes an image straight from it prompt-only output; what the Office says can be protected is what you add afterwards, such as creative edits or a creative arrangement of images in a larger work. (sources: 1, 2) The About page explains which model makes the images.

Sources

Every statement above about the law, or about another company's rules, links to the page that makes it. We checked these sources on 12 October 2026; table rows from our fact sheets show their own date.

Questions

Can I sell AI-generated images?

Often, yes: every generator we checked allows commercial use on at least some plans. Check your plan's terms, keep logos, real people and characters out, and follow the marketplace's rules; Etsy, for example, requires sellers to disclose AI use in the listing description. In the US, the Copyright Office says a prompt-only image isn't protected by copyright, so others may be able to copy it.

Do I own the images I make with an AI image generator?

Many tools' terms say you do, including OpenAI's, Canva's and Midjourney's, with conditions; Leonardo AI keeps ownership of free-plan images. Owning an image under a tool's terms isn't the same as holding copyright in it: those terms grant ownership only as far as the law allows, and in the US the Copyright Office says a prompt-only image has no copyright.

Are AI-generated images in the public domain?

In the US, the Copyright Office says images made from a prompt alone aren't protected by copyright, so no one can claim copyright in them; people often call that public domain. That doesn't make them free of every restriction: the tool's terms still apply, and a trademark, a real person's likeness or a copyrighted character in the image can still cause problems. Other countries, such as the UK, treat them differently.

Can I copyright an AI image I've edited?

In the US, possibly the parts you made. The Copyright Office says creative changes, a creative selection or arrangement, and your own work that's perceptible in the output can be protected, but not the AI-generated material itself. If you register, you must disclose the AI-generated content. For anything valuable, ask a lawyer.

Do I have to say an image is AI-generated?

It depends where you publish. YouTube requires disclosure of realistic AI content, Etsy requires it in the listing description, Amazon KDP requires you to disclose AI-generated text, images (including covers and interior images) and translations, and Adobe Stock requires a label on all generative AI submissions. OpenAI's and Canva's terms also forbid presenting AI output as human-made.

Can I use AI images of celebrities or brand logos?

That's where most of the risk is, whatever the copyright position: a person's likeness can be protected by right of publicity laws, and logos by trademark law. Our Acceptable Use Policy doesn't allow images that infringe trademarks or logos, or that depict real, identifiable people in a misleading, sexual, defamatory or harmful way.

Can I use AIPhoto-Generator images commercially?

We don't claim ownership of the images you generate. Your rights to use them are subject to our Terms of Service and the AI model provider's terms, which may change, and copyright protection for AI-generated images varies by country and may not be available. Before using an image commercially, make sure your use complies with both and with applicable law.

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