Can you use AI-generated images for client work?

Use this workflow

Confirm your generator plan permits commercial work and, where relevant, transfer or client use.
Use private generation/settings when confidentiality or unreleased products are involved.
Do not promise exclusive copyright ownership unless you have checked the law and the underlying workflow.
Clear logos, recognizable people, protected characters, source images and other third-party material separately.
Put AI-use, warranties and responsibility for supplied inputs into the client agreement when the project is material.

Where people get this use case wrong

The commercial-use checkbox is only the beginning. These are realistic failure modes for this specific workflow:

A client sends you an unreleased product photo and you upload it into a public-generation workflow. Commercial permission does not solve the confidentiality problem.
The proposal promises the client exclusive copyright in a purely AI-generated asset even though the provider only assigns its own rights and local copyright law may require human authorship.
The client supplies a logo, celebrity photo or licensed stock image as a reference and assumes your generator licence clears that source material. It does not.

What to keep on file

You do not need a legal dossier for every casual image, but material commercial work is easier to defend and re-check when the creation process is documented.

The generator, model/feature, plan and generation date.
Whether the job used public or private generation and any confidentiality setting that mattered.
The origin and licence of client-supplied reference files, logos, fonts or photographs.
The final prompt/edit history and the contract language covering AI use, approvals and responsibility for supplied inputs.

Generator starting points

The table below is the provider side only. A “generally permitted” generator can still lead to a conditional or blocked result when the destination has its own AI-content rule.

Tool	Commercial-use status	Plan / rights note
Midjourney	Conditional	If a company has more than US$1 million in gross revenue, Midjourney requires Pro or Mega to own/use generated assets commercially under its current terms.
ChatGPT Images / OpenAI	Generally permitted	No special consumer plan gate is identified here for ordinary commercial use. API and business services are governed by the OpenAI Services Agreement in addition to applicable service-specific terms, with separate contractual protections and exclusions.
Adobe Firefly	Generally permitted	The key distinction is the model/feature used, not merely the subscription name. Partner models inside Firefly can have different terms and should be checked separately.
Ideogram	Generally permitted	Do not confuse output rights with model-weight licensing. Hosted/API output use and self-hosted model weights are separate paths: the public open weights are non-commercial unless you obtain the applicable self-serve commercial or enterprise licence.
Leonardo.Ai	Generally permitted	Commercial use is possible on both free and paid tiers, but paid usage provides materially stronger ownership/control according to Leonardo’s current pricing and terms pages.
Recraft	Conditional	Free: no commercial use. Paid: business/personal use is permitted and Recraft assigns its copyright interest in generated assets, subject to the terms.
Canva AI / Magic Studio	Conditional	The important access distinction here is not a subscription price gate but whether the output is standalone AI output or incorporates Canva Licensed Content governed by Canva's Content License Agreement.
Runway	Generally permitted	No ordinary plan-based commercial-use gate is identified in the current usage-rights guidance. Enterprise arrangements can add privacy, no-training or contractual protections, but those are separate from the baseline output-use permission.
Magnific / Freepik AI	Conditional	Free: do not rely on the asset for commercial deployment. Paid: commercial AI-content licence is included, subject to the service terms and third-party rights.

Do not skip the destination platform. A generator’s commercial-use permission does not override Etsy, KDP, stock-site or marketplace rules. Use the checker when the final destination is one of the supported platforms.

Primary sources

Open the current official source before a high-value or sensitive use.

AI Pic Market last reviewed these sources on September 16, 2026.