The well-known stock photo site Dreamstime announced recently that it is accepting AI-generated images in its library –thus making them available for licensing–albeit under certain additional conditions to those of regular image submissions.
The requirements focus on providing transparency and legal safety for the customers and addressing the main questions surrounding the copyright and legal validity of AI imagery.
This makes Dreamstime one of the early adopters of AI-generated visuals in the stock media industry, along with Adobe Stock.
Conditions to Submit AI-Generated Images to Dreamstime
Per the announcement, Dreamstime has added three standards to its submission criteria, specifically for AI-generated images and synthetic media.
They are:
- Contributors must have all rights to the generated images they submit. This is important because not all AI generative models give users full rights over the content they create with them. With this requirement, Dreamstime is weeding out images with potentially problematic copyright.
- The image description must clearly indicate that it was created using an AI model. This condition increases transparency as it will leave no doubt of whether an image is AI-generated or not.
- One of the categories selected for the image must be Illustrations and Clipart/AI-generated. This way, customers shouldn’t have a problem filtering or navigating through AI-generated content easily.
- Contributors will not upload images of generated people's faces. The agency states this restriction is because “ it is impossible to provide a model release for them”. This isn’t an absolute truth, as some other companies have found ways to obtain permission from real people to use their likenesses in AI-generated visuals. Nevertheless, it’s a good way of avoiding legal problems with the right of privacy and biometric data.
Finally, all other submission requirements for regular images also apply to AI-generated pictures.
As only images that meet all these points will be accepted into the catalog, the idea is that on Dreamstime, you will find AI-created imagery that is legally safer to use and of higher quality.
Dreamstime Believes in the Creative Possibilities of AI Imagery
In introducing its new AI content submission policies, the entity acknowledged the main issues regarding the legality of AI-generated images: doubts about copyright ownership and the ethics of generative models that create new pictures from “scraps” of other artists’ work.
However, they also expressed that “This new technology has enormous popularity and infinite commercial potential in addition to the artistic capacities and the considerable impact on human imagination.”
This is why they decided to embrace AI-generated images by including them in their offer, albeit under strict legal and ethical standards.
Are you planning on licensing AI images from Dreamstime? Let us know!
