AI Art and Copyright — What You Can and Can't Use Commercially

The disclaimer

Not legal advice. Talk to an actual lawyer for anything high-stakes. This post covers the industry consensus as of mid-2026.

Can you own an AI image?

In the US: the US Copyright Office holds that images generated solely by AI from a text prompt are not eligible for copyright. You can use them, but you can't stop someone else from using the same output.

In the EU and UK: more permissive — significant human authorship (through prompt engineering, curation, editing) can qualify the work for copyright protection.

Practical answer: for most commercial use — ads, thumbnails, social — this doesn't matter. You care about use rights, not owning the image.

Commercial use rights by model

• SDXL, SD 1.5 — CreativeML Open RAIL-M license. Commercial use allowed with a few restrictions (no unlawful use, no misuse, etc.).
• Flux Dev — non-commercial license only. Do not use outputs commercially.
• Flux Pro — commercial use allowed through the paid API.
• Midjourney — commercial use for paid subscribers.
• DALL-E 3 — commercial use allowed.

When you're safe using an AI image commercially

• You generated it with a commercially-licensed model
• You have a paid plan on the platform (most free tiers restrict commercial use)
• It doesn't contain someone's likeness without permission
• It doesn't contain a real trademarked logo
• It doesn't infringe on obvious style-copy of a living artist

When you're not safe

• Deepfakes of real people
• "In the style of [living artist]" for anything you'd sell
• Anything that looks like it lifted a real brand's logo
• Adult content in a region where that's regulated

What Imagoat provides

Every paid plan (Creator, Growth, Pro, Studio) includes explicit commercial rights. The Free tier is watermarked and personal-use only.