Rights to Generated Images: What Matters to Understand

The legal side of generation is discussed at length and confusingly, because three different questions get merged into one. Separating them makes things markedly clearer. What follows are general orientations rather than legal advice: specific rules differ by country and change.

Question one: rights to the source material

The simplest and most clear-cut. An image you upload must be yours or used with the rights holder's permission.

• Your own photograph — no question.
• A photograph taken by someone else — the rights usually sit with the photographer; their consent is needed.
• A photograph of another person — the depicted person's consent is needed, regardless of who took it.
• A stock image — per the licence terms, and not all licences permit modification.
• An image from the internet — by default, no.

Question two: rights to the result

Here matters are more complex and resolved differently across jurisdictions. The general tendency: an image created entirely automatically without human creative input receives no copyright protection in many legal systems.

Practical consequences worth noting:

1. You may not hold exclusive rights to a generated image — meaning you could not stop others using it.
2. A given service's terms determine what you may do with the result: commercial use, modification, resale.
3. The more creative input on your side (selection, refinement, composition), the stronger the position — but this depends on jurisdiction.

Question three: the rights of depicted people

A separate and frequently missed point. A person's right to their own image exists independently of copyright in a photograph.

Which means: even holding every right to the source and the result, you cannot freely publish an image of a recognisable person without their consent — especially in a commercial context.

A generated image resembling a specific person falls under the same logic: the resemblance creates the problem, even though it is formally not a photograph.

Service terms

They are worth reading, and they usually answer most practical questions: whether the result may be used commercially, who holds the rights, what the service does with uploaded images, how long it keeps them.

Differences between services are substantial, and the assumption that "they're all roughly the same" is wrong.

Commercial use

The most sensitive zone. A practical minimum before using a generated image commercially:

• The service terms permit commercial use.
• Every source was uploaded lawfully.
• The image contains no recognisable people without their consent.
• The image does not reproduce a recognisable style or work belonging to someone else.
• For advertising — requirements about accuracy and, where applicable, disclosure are met.

What to do when unsure

A practical rule: the higher the stakes of the use, the more reason to check. A personal avatar and an advertising campaign call for different degrees of care.

And a general point: regulation in this area is changing actively. What was permissible two years ago may be regulated today, so for commercial projects it makes sense to check current requirements rather than a once-formed impression.