Path 1: You're Licens­ing an AI Image from the Adobe Stock Library

This is the most straight­for­ward route. You go to the Adobe Stock web­site, search for an image, and license it. Many of the images on the plat­form now are cre­at­ed using gen­er­a­tive AI tools. Adobe made a con­scious deci­sion to allow these, unlike some oth­er plat­forms that ini­tial­ly banned them.

So, when you license one of these images, you're get­ting the same com­mer­cial rights you would for a reg­u­lar pho­to­graph or illus­tra­tion on the site. If you get a Stan­dard License, you can use it in dig­i­tal ads, on your web­site, in social media posts, and in print runs up to 500,000 copies. If you want to print it on a t‑shirt or a cof­fee mug that you plan to sell, you’ll need to buy an Extend­ed License. That’s stan­dard stuff for stock images.

But here’s what’s hap­pen­ing behind the scenes, and it’s impor­tant for your peace of mind. Adobe has a spe­cif­ic set of rules for con­trib­u­tors who want to sell their AI-gen­er­at­ed art. Know­ing these rules helps you under­stand the pro­tec­tions you have as a buy­er.

First, the cre­ator must label the image as being made with gen­er­a­tive AI tools. This is about trans­paren­cy. Adobe wants you to know what you're licens­ing. They also have to con­firm they have the right to license the image to you for broad com­mer­cial use.

Sec­ond, and this is a big one, Adobe has rules about the text prompts used to cre­ate the images. Con­trib­u­tors are not allowed to sub­mit con­tent cre­at­ed with prompts that ref­er­ence oth­er artists, well-known peo­ple (unless they have a mod­el release), or copy­right­ed fic­tion­al char­ac­ters. They also can't sub­mit AI images that look like they're depict­ing a real, news­wor­thy event. These rules are in place specif­i­cal­ly to avoid legal headaches. They are try­ing to pre­vent a sit­u­a­tion where you license an image that looks like it was made by a famous artist, and then that artist's estate comes after you.

Third, if the AI image real­is­ti­cal­ly depicts a per­son, the con­trib­u­tor is sup­posed to have a mod­el release, just like with a real pho­to­graph. If the per­son is entire­ly fic­tion­al, there's a check­box for the con­trib­u­tor to indi­cate that the "Peo­ple and Prop­er­ty are fic­tion­al." This cre­ates a clear dis­tinc­tion and adds anoth­er lay­er of pro­tec­tion.

So, when you license an AI image from the stock library, you're rely­ing on Adobe's sys­tem of rules and review to ensure the image is safe to use. It’s treat­ed just like any oth­er stock asset with the same licens­ing terms.

Path 2: You're Cre­at­ing Your Own AI Image with Adobe Fire­fly

This is the oth­er, more hands-on, approach. Adobe Fire­fly is Adobe's own fam­i­ly of gen­er­a­tive AI mod­els. This is where things get real­ly inter­est­ing from a com­mer­cial use per­spec­tive.

Adobe has been very delib­er­ate in how it built Fire­fly. The big sell­ing point is that it’s designed to be "com­mer­cial­ly safe." What does that mean? It comes down to the data it was trained on. Adobe trained the first com­mer­cial mod­els of Fire­fly on the mas­sive library of Adobe Stock images—where they already have explic­it per­mis­sion from contributors—and on pub­lic domain con­tent where copy­right has expired. They did this specif­i­cal­ly to avoid the legal issues oth­er AI mod­els have faced, where they were trained by scrap­ing bil­lions of images from across the inter­net with­out per­mis­sion.

Because of this, Adobe is con­fi­dent enough to state that, in gen­er­al, you can use the images you gen­er­ate with Fire­fly for your com­mer­cial projects. They even offer full IP indem­ni­fi­ca­tion for enter­prise users for con­tent cre­at­ed with Fire­fly. This means if you use a Fire­fly-gen­er­at­ed image and some­one sues you for copy­right infringe­ment, Adobe’s legal team will back you up. That is a huge state­ment of con­fi­dence in their sys­tem and a major rea­son why many busi­ness­es feel com­fort­able using it.

Of course, there's a small but impor­tant excep­tion: if a spe­cif­ic fea­ture with­in Fire­fly is marked as being in "beta," Adobe might state that you can't use the out­put com­mer­cial­ly. This is rare, but it’s always some­thing to check. The main take­away is that images from the main, released ver­sion of Fire­fly are intend­ed for com­mer­cial use.

The Big "Buts": Under­stand­ing the Lim­its and Risks

So, it's most­ly good news. But this is where the friend­ly, direct advice comes in. You need to under­stand a few crit­i­cal details to use these images cor­rect­ly and pro­tect your­self.

First, you can­not use any stock image, AI-gen­er­at­ed or not, as part of a logo or trade­mark. The rea­son is sim­ple: when you license a stock image, you are buy­ing the right to use it. You do not own the copy­right. Some­one else can license the exact same image. For a logo, you need some­thing that is unique to you and that you own com­plete­ly.

Sec­ond, the top­ic of copy­right for AI-gen­er­at­ed art is still a legal gray area glob­al­ly. The cur­rent stance in many places, includ­ing the U.S., is that work cre­at­ed entire­ly by AI with­out suf­fi­cient human author­ship can­not be copy­right­ed. What does this mean for you? Even if you cre­ate a stun­ning image in Fire­fly, you can use it com­mer­cial­ly, but you can’t claim to own the copy­right to it. This means you can't stop some­one else from using a very sim­i­lar or iden­ti­cal image if they hap­pen to gen­er­ate it too. It’s essen­tial­ly the same prin­ci­ple as a roy­al­­ty-free stock pho­to: you have the right to use it, but not exclu­sive­ly.

Third, the rules are there for a rea­son. Don't try to get around them. When you are cre­at­ing your own images in Fire­fly, fol­low the same prin­ci­ples that Adobe requires of its con­trib­u­tors. Don't write prompts like "a super­hero in the style of [famous com­ic book artist]" or "a pho­to of [famous actor] on Mars." This is just ask­ing for trou­ble. Stick to descrip­tive prompts that don't rely on the intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty of oth­ers. Think "a woman with red hair in a futur­is­tic sil­ver suit stand­ing on a red plan­et" instead. It gets you the image you want with­out cre­at­ing legal risk.

A Sim­ple, Prac­ti­cal Walk­through

Let's make this real. Imag­ine you run a small cof­fee shop and you need an image for a new social media cam­paign pro­mot­ing your win­ter sea­son­al lat­te.

• If you use the Adobe Stock Library:

  1. Go to stock.adobe.com.
  2. In the search bar, type some­thing like "cozy win­ter cof­fee shop."
  3. You’ll see a mix of pho­tos and illus­tra­tions. On the left-hand side, there’s a fil­ter. You can choose to see only images "Cre­at­ed using gen­er­a­tive AI."
  4. You find a beau­ti­ful AI-gen­er­at­ed image of a steam­ing lat­te on a snowy win­dowsill.
  5. You license it using a stan­dard license. Now you can use that image in your Insta­gram posts, on your web­site, and on fly­ers you print for the shop. It's all cov­ered.

• If you use Adobe Fire­fly:

  1. Go to the Adobe Fire­fly web­site.
  2. Select the "Text to Image" fea­ture.
  3. In the prompt box, you type: "A close-up, pho­to­re­al­is­tic image of a lat­te in a fes­tive red mug, with cin­na­mon sprin­kled on top in the shape of a snowflake. The back­ground is a soft­ly blurred cof­fee shop with warm string lights."
  4. Fire­fly gen­er­ates a few options for you. You pick your favorite, maybe make a few tweaks, and down­load the high-res­o­lu­­tion file.
  5. You can now use this image in the exact same way for your cam­paign. You cre­at­ed some­thing unique to your vision, and because you used Fire­fly, it's cleared for com­mer­cial use.

The bot­tom line is that Adobe has put a lot of thought into mak­ing AI-gen­er­at­ed images a viable and safe com­mer­cial tool. They’ve cre­at­ed a sys­tem of rules and a tech­nol­o­gy built on a foun­da­tion of licensed data. As a user, this gives you a much safer path than just pulling an image from a ran­dom AI gen­er­a­tor online. Just remem­ber the basic rules: under­stand your license, don't use it for a logo, and be smart about the prompts you write your­self.