Commercial Use Rights for AI-Generated Media

Using AI media commercially involves four separate questions. First, what does the tool's license allow? Many generators assign output rights to the user or grant a broad license, often only on paid plans. Midjourney, for example, ties commercial use to paid subscriptions and requires larger companies to use higher tiers. Terms may also give the vendor a license to your outputs, forbid certain uses, or make you responsible for your prompts. Second, can you own the result? In the United States, the Copyright Office's position is that material generated by AI without enough human creative control is not protected by copyright. In the 2023 Zarya of the Dawn decision, the office protected a comic's human-written text and the arrangement of its images, but not the Midjourney images themselves. Courts upheld the human authorship requirement in Thaler v. Perlmutter. In practice, a competitor may be able to copy a purely AI-generated image. Other countries differ. The UK, for instance, has a provision covering computer-generated works. Third, does the output infringe someone else's rights? A license from the vendor does not protect you if the output closely resembles a copyrighted character, includes a trademarked logo, or copies a real person's likeness or voice. Fourth, who pays if there is a claim? Some vendors offer indemnification, a promise to defend customers against certain claims. Examples include Adobe for eligible Firefly enterprise customers, Microsoft's Customer Copyright Commitment for commercial Copilot users, and similar offers from Google and OpenAI for some enterprise and API customers. These promises usually come with conditions, such as keeping safety filters on and not deliberately infringing. The most common misconception is that 'commercially safe' or 'royalty-free' means no risk at all. It usually means one layer of risk has been reduced, not all four.