If you’re looking for the short answer, then yes you can, but read the licence and terms. If you want a full breakdown of AI Images, potential licensing pitfalls and advantages of using AI, then grab a cup of tea and let’s begin to answer can i use AI images for my business?
Before we really get into this article, we are only talking about AI images, AI generated text and articles are a completely different ball game which we will cover in a future post.
Table of Contents
What are AI Generated Images?
Using wildly complicated computer maths we can give a text description to a computer which will generate an image.
Born from computer science, AI is the art of training computers to think like humans. Some may argue it’s the beginning of SkyNet from Terminator. Computer scientists feed images along with descriptions to AI computers, so they learn the paint strokes of Vincent van Gogh, styles of Andy Warhol and many other aspects of art. Everything but the love artists have for their passion.
This is an AI generated image.
Advantages of AI Images for Small Business
- It’s free(ish) – while this technology is still new many companies will offer this service for free and many have limits on the amount of free images after which we have to pay.
- Licensing – many are open source to a point, it’s worth reading their licence agreements to check. But with most we can freely use our image in any way we wish. More on this below.
- Simple – we don’t have the hassle of finding or paying a designer. No back and forth on changes, once we press the button we have the image. They can generate images in less than 2 minutes. A designer could take 3 days (or less if you pay more).
Disadvantages of AI Generated Images
- Love & passion – We want love and passion to form part of our company logo. We may not need it for an image of puppies playing for our small blog post “5 tips when training a puppy”.
- Licensing – You don’t own the copyright to our generated image, if someone else uses a similar description they may get the same or similar image. More on this below.
- Text descriptions – if you’re looking for something specific we will need a detailed description. It’s a trial-and-error task. Designers can use their years of experience to understand what you want, AI isn’t so intuitive and needs direction.
- Designers – a designer has experience to turn our description of what we need. They know what’s ‘in’ and what’s ‘out’. We can also ask for changes and re-edits when an image doesn’t quite fit what we need. We won’t get that with AI.
- Using Copyrighted Material – it is very easy to ask an AI generator to use a copyrighted character, don’t. Common sense should tell us that asking for an image of Mickey Mouse cooking pasta will be under copyright. Fair use may come into play, but it’s best to avoid obvious lawsuits.
Licensing
We can’t just use anything we find on the internet for free. To help you decide what image generator to use we have compiled a list of the top 5 generators and their licencing options.
- DALL-E (Terms)
- 15 Free Credits Per Month
- Commercial usage allowed
- Deep Dream Generator (Terms)
- About 1 image a day
- Commercial usage allowed
- Dream by Wombo (Terms)
- Commercial usage NOT allowed
- Starry.ai (Terms)
- 5 Free Credits Per Day
- Commercial usage allowed
Spend the time reading licensing agreements in full, they are subject to change at any point. Though many do state we can use our image ‘freely’ many of their terms & conditions suggest.
- They own the image not us,
- They can revoke our usage at any point,
- They don’t accept liability if our generated art lands us in a lawsuit.
On top of licensing we have some potential lawsuits, there are rumors that images used to train these AI computers were and are currently under copyright. Though this is speculation at the moment it is being looked into, if it goes into an official investigation, if it goes to court and depending on the outcome. This might cause us issues further down the line.
Similar questions have been asked regarding GitHub and OpenAI (DALL-E creator) regarding their data set. GitHub used code hosted on their site to train their AI, that’s 100 million potential programs copied, analysed and used without direct permission just a quick email ‘We have updated our Terms & Condition’.
Don’t use copyrighted characters or people who resemble famous people in your generated art. Mickey Mouse and Zendaya driving down Main Street USA in Lightning McQueen WILL get you in trouble with Disney.
Image Comparison
To help you decide on which image generator to use we used the same description in each
“Cartoon garlic bulb dressed as a pirate, on a sunken ship”
As you can see the results aren’t great but with some tweaking of our description and changing some of the style settings, we might get something we like
Conclusion of can i use AI images for my business
If you’re looking for a simple image to accompany a blog post, then AI might be our answer but if we want something specific then hiring an artist / designer is always going to be the right way to go. AI still has a long way to go, eventually it will replace us all, for the time being we don’t need to worry about a robot uprising.
Don’t use obvious copyrighted material like Donald Duck, Pokémon, etc.
Don’t use AI art for hard copy marketing, a blog post or social media is fine. We can easily change / delete these but having to reprint 1000 leaflets is a cost that’s not worth the risk.
Our posts using AI artwork
We have been using some AI art in the odd post. Can I use AI images for my business? Yes, we have.
- Understanding The Basics of Google Search Console (Spider Image)