We used the wrong AI image tool for client work and received our first copyright notice. Here's exactly what happened, how we resolved it, and the tools we switched to.
I'm going to share something most agencies won't tell you: we used the wrong AI image tool for client work and received a copyright notice. Nobody was sued — but it was expensive, stressful, and completely avoidable.
What Happened
We were using an AI image generator for client social media content. The tool's terms of service were ambiguous on commercial rights for the plan we were on. A stock image agency identified one of the images as similar to content in their library and sent a notice to our client, who then came to us. After legal consultation, we paid a licensing fee to make it go away. Total cost: approximately $800 in legal consultation and licensing, plus damaged client trust that took months to rebuild.
The Root Cause: Terms of Service Nobody Reads
When we actually read the terms of service for the AI tool we were using, the commercial rights situation was genuinely unclear. The tool claimed you "owned" the output but also included carve-outs for similarity to existing content. In practice, we had no real protection.
Adobe Firefly's terms are dramatically clearer. Firefly is trained on Adobe Stock images and public domain content specifically to avoid this problem. Adobe explicitly indemnifies Creative Cloud subscribers against copyright claims arising from Firefly output. That indemnification is worth more than the subscription cost for any agency doing commercial work.
Our Current Stack
Adobe Firefly for anything that goes to clients or appears in paid advertising. Midjourney Pro for internal concepting and creative direction work that won't be used commercially. The distinction is clear, easy for our team to follow, and legally sound.
The lesson we paid $800 to learn: AI image tools are not all equal on commercial rights. Read the terms of service before you produce a single image for a client. The tools that have clear commercial rights are obvious once you know to look — and the price difference between them and the ambiguous alternatives is trivial compared to the risk.