Defying the wishes of many artists, Adobe will be selling AI-generated stock images

cool art deco robot who is a very good painter
(Image credit: DALLE)

Axios reports that Adobe now allows images created using AI art tools like Midjourney and DALL-E to be sold on its stock image site, Adobe Stock. As someone who regularly uses ridiculous stock imagery in their articles all the time this might make my job a little easier, but more importantly the company is wading into grey moral and legal territory as it expands this aspect of its business.

Adobe is asking artists who submit AI-generated images to follow the same process for uploading images onto its site as everyone else, with one exception—that the art needs to be tagged as AI-generated. 

AI art-making tools train an algorithm to pan the internet for thousands of images and generate images that imitate a specific style based on user-inputted parameters. So if you want an image of an "Obi-Wan Kenobi portrait as a Picasso," that's how the AI does it. It's also how our own Dave James trained an AI in Stable Diffusion to paint like his uncle Hermann

Profiting from art you didn't technically create but instead had an AI generate for you has recently been a hot-button issue. For example, someone used AI to win an art competition in September and said they "didn't break any rules." There's also growing concern that AI will someday replace commercial artists

Adobe senior director Sarah Casillas told Axios that she was "pleasantly surprised" by the images submitted and that they meet the company's "quality standards." Adobe also told the outlet that it would compensate anyone who bought AI-generated stock imagery should that particular image face any legal challenge. Adobe requires that artists have the "proper rights to the works" they submit.

Not all stock image sites are willing to take that legal risk, though. The CEO of Getty Images told The Verge that Getty wouldn't allow the upload or sale of AI-generated images because of "real concerns with respect to the copyright of outputs from these models and unaddressed rights issues with respect to the imagery." 

The best CPU coolers in 2022Best AIO coolers for CPUsBest CPU air coolers

The best CPU coolers in 2022
Wet or dry, the best CPU coolers around
Best AIO coolers for CPUs
All-in-one, and one for all... components
Best CPU air coolers
CPU coolers with or without fans that go brrrr

Jorge Jimenez
Hardware writer, Human Pop-Tart

Jorge is a hardware writer from the enchanted lands of New Jersey. When he's not filling the office with the smell of Pop-Tarts, he's reviewing all sorts of gaming hardware, from laptops with the latest mobile GPUs to gaming chairs with built-in back massagers. He's been covering games and tech for over ten years and has written for Dualshockers, WCCFtech, Tom's Guide, and a bunch of other places on the world wide web. 

Read more
A zombie santa with six fingers leaps at the screen.
Call of Duty admits it's using generative AI to 'help develop some in-game assets', and suddenly all those poorly made calling cards make sense
live action Jimbo the Jester from Balatro holding a playing card and addressing the camera
LocalThunk forbids AI-generated art on the Balatro subreddit: 'I think it does real harm to artists of all kinds'
A image representing a typical YouTube tech video thumbnail using joke elements to demonstrate the use of an AI tool
Is time too precious to waste making gurning thumbnails for your YouTube videos? Huzzah for this AI tool that does it all for you, then
OpenAI logo displayed on a phone screen and ChatGPT website displayed on a laptop screen are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on December 5, 2022.
If you don't let us scrape copyrighted content, we will lose out to China says OpenAI as it tries to influence US government
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - NOVEMBER 08: CEO of Take-Two Interactive Software Strauss Zelnick attends Paley International Council Summit at Paley Museum on November 08, 2022 in New York City. (Photo by Steven Ferdman/Getty Images)
Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick takes a moment to remind us once again that 'there's no such thing' as artificial intelligence
A collage of Radeon RX 9000 series graphics cards, as shown in AMD's promotional video for the launch of RDNA 4 at CES 2025
AMD announces new driver-based AI for 'AMD-related questions', local file summaries, and image generation for its new line of graphics cards
Latest in AI
Otter AI Meeting Agent
As if your work meetings weren't already fun enough, now Otter has a new all-hearing AI agent that remembers everything anyone has said and can join in the discussion
Image for
'No real human would go four links deep into a maze of AI-generated nonsense': Cloudflare's AI Labyrinth uses decoy pages to trap web-crawling bots and feed them slop 'as a defensive weapon'
CHINA - 2025/02/11: In this photo illustration, a Roblox logo is seen displayed on the screen of a smartphone. (Photo Illustration by Sheldon Cooper/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
'Humans still surpass machines': Roblox has been using a machine learning voice chat moderation system for a year, but in some cases you just can't beat real people
OpenAI logo displayed on a phone screen and ChatGPT website displayed on a laptop screen are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on December 5, 2022.
ChatGPT faces legal complaint after a user inputted their own name and found it accused them of made-up crimes
Public Eye trailer still - dead-eyed police officer sitting for an interview
I'm creeped out by this trailer for a generative AI game about people using an AI-powered app to solve violent crimes in the year 2028 that somehow isn't a cautionary tale
Closeup of the new Copilot key coming to Windows 11 PC keyboards
Microsoft co-authored paper suggests the regular use of gen-AI can leave users with a 'diminished skill for independent problem-solving' and at least one AI model seems to agree
Latest in News
A mech awakens.
Mecha Break developer is considering unlocking all mechs following open beta feedback
Lara Croft Unified Art
Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics lays off 17 employees 'to better align our current business needs and the studio's future success'
A long bendy arm stealing money from people in a subway car
'You're a very long arm. You steal things. It's a comedy game,' explains developer of comedy game where you steal things with a very long arm
The heroes are attacked by monsters
Pillars of Eternity is getting turn-based combat to mark its 10th anniversary, and that means PC Gamer editors will soon be arguing about combat mechanics again
Image of Ronaldo from Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves trailer
It doesn't really make sense that soccer star Ronaldo is now a Fatal Fury character, but if you follow the money you can see how it happened
Junah beginning a battle in Metaphor: ReFantazio.
Today's RPG fans are 'very sensitive to feeling like they wasted time' when they die, says Metaphor: ReFantazio battle planner—but Atlus still made combat hard anyway