I don’t use stock photo sites like Unsplash or Pexels anymore. I generate all my featured images with AI, specifically Gemini, using prompts like the Heritage Method to make unique, ultra-photorealistic 16:9 images that look like editorial food photography, without having to worry about licensing or seeing the same stock image on a competitor’s site. That is my reasoning, and it deserves a second look on one point: generating images does not make the question of rights disappear, it moves it to a different set of documents. Both sets are below, taken from the sites themselves.
Unsplash and Pexels
The Unsplash License is short. It says images on the site are free to use for commercial and noncommercial purposes, with no permission needed from the photographer or from Unsplash. The grant covers downloading, copying, modifying, distributing and using the images, and it is described as irrevocable, nonexclusive and worldwide. One thing is excluded: the license does not include the right to compile images from Unsplash to replicate a similar or competing service. Credit is appreciated when possible and is not required.
The Pexels license is also plain, and it is a good deal more specific about what you cannot do. All photos and videos can be downloaded and used for free, and edited. The prohibited list covers using identifiable people in a negative or offensive way, selling unaltered copies such as posters, prints or products, implying that a person or brand endorses your product, redistributing or selling the media on other stock or wallpaper platforms, and using the imagery as part of a trademark, design mark, trade name, business name or service mark. Credit is not necessary but always appreciated.
Look at what those two have in common. Neither asks for payment or an attribution line. Both are written for people who want to use a photo on a website, a newsletter or a flyer and do not want a lawyer for the afternoon. For most blog use, that is the whole story.
The exceptions are the interesting part, and they show up in a table.
| Source | Free for commercial use | Credit required | Notable limits stated on its page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unsplash | Yes | No, appreciated | No compiling images to build a competing service |
| Pexels | Yes | No, appreciated | No selling unaltered copies, no implied endorsement, no identifiable people in a negative or offensive light, no use as part of a trademark or business name |
| Pixabay | Yes | No, appreciated | No selling content on its own with little added work, no commercial use of recognizable trademarks or logos, no misleading or deceptive use |
Pixabay and the fine print
Pixabay’s license summary allows content to be used for free, modified and used without credit, subject to a list of prohibited uses. Those include selling or distributing content on its own when little creative work has been added, commercial use of content that contains recognizable trademarks, logos or brands, immoral or illegal uses involving recognizable people, misleading or deceptive uses, and using content as part of a trademark, trade name or business name.
The summary ends with the sentence that matters most, and it is easy to skim past. Other rights, such as copyrights, trademarks or privacy rights, may apply to some content, and the user is responsible for checking whether a third party’s consent or license is needed. It also says only the full Content License is legally binding, which makes the summary a guide and not a contract.
That caveat is not unique to Pixabay. It is the shape of the whole arrangement. A photographer can license the photograph. A photographer cannot license the face of a stranger on the street or the logo on a shop window, because those belong to somebody else. The license answers the question of who owns the picture, and it leaves open who owns what is in it.
What a license never covers
Three things stay with the person using the image, whichever site it came from. The first is the people in it. Pexels bars showing identifiable people in a bad light or an offensive way, and Pixabay ties the same worry to recognizable people in immoral or illegal contexts. Pexels does not address releases at all, and Pixabay tells the user to check whether a third party’s consent is needed.
The second is brands. A photo of a coffee cup with a logo, a shop front with a name, a branded box on a counter: Pixabay says commercial use of content with recognizable trademarks is off limits, and Pexels bars implying that a brand endorses your product. Anyone illustrating a post about a restaurant should look at the corners of the frame before choosing.
The third is accuracy. A stock photo of a plate of food is a picture of somebody else’s plate. On a post about a particular dish, a particular shop or a particular product, the reader may take it for yours.
Credit is the small fourth item, and it is a courtesy and nothing more. All three pages say attribution is appreciated and none makes it a condition. A caption naming the photographer costs a few words and keeps the practice honest, though a business that runs a hundred posts with a hundred credit lines has to decide whether the clutter is worth the courtesy. Either answer is within the licenses. The only real error is to treat a free license as permission for something it forbids, such as printing the photograph on a poster and selling it without adding anything of your own.
Why the same photo shows up everywhere
My second reason for dropping stock sites was seeing the same stock image on a competitor’s site, and the licenses explain it. Unsplash describes its license as nonexclusive, which means the photographer, and everybody else, can license the same photograph to anyone. Free and unlimited use by anyone is the point of these sites, and it is also the reason a popular image of a coffee cup or a laptop on a wooden table turns up across a hundred small business sites.
For a kitchen, that matters more than it sounds. A restaurant’s identity is partly how it looks, and an image borrowed from a pool that every other restaurant draws on is an image with no connection to the place. A reader who sees the same bowl of soup on two sites in one afternoon files both sites as the same kind of site.
What Google’s published terms say about generated images
Now the other set of documents. I can only report what Google publishes, and I cannot say how those terms apply to any particular image. Google’s Terms of Service say users keep ownership of their content, and that for services which let you generate original content, Google won’t claim ownership over that content. The page does not separately explain who owns the output of a generative AI tool, and it does not address whether two users could receive similar images from similar prompts.
It does contain two rules worth knowing. It prohibits misleading others into thinking generative AI content was created by a human, and it points to Google’s Generative AI Prohibited Use Policy for detail. That policy tells users not to generate content that infringes privacy and intellectual property rights, and it prohibits misrepresenting AI-generated content as created solely by a human in order to deceive.
Read together, those lines do not say that generated images are free of rights questions. They say Google does not claim the output, and that the user remains responsible for not infringing anyone else and for not passing the work off as something it is not. Whether a generated image can be protected by copyright, and whether a prompt can make an image resemble somebody else’s protected work, are legal questions that a published terms page does not settle. They belong with an attorney.
The practical habits follow from that. Keep the prompts that made the images. Do not prompt for a real person’s likeness, a brand’s logo or another artist’s recognizable style, since the policy says not to infringe others’ rights. Where an image illustrates a thing you sell or serve, show the thing itself.
When stock photos still make sense
The honest turn against my own habit is that stock photos have virtues generated images lack. They are real photographs of real things, their license terms are written down on public pages, and they require no skill with prompts. Terms change, on those pages and on Google’s, so keep a copy of the terms as they stood on the day you use an image. For a post about a subject you cannot photograph yourself, a plain stock image may be the safest and quickest option, and a license page takes five minutes to read.
My own rule of thumb is simple. For a featured image on a food post, a generated photograph does a job a stock photo cannot do, because it belongs only to the post. For a product, a person or a place, use a photograph of the real thing. And for any commercial use where the rights actually matter, read the license or terms page that applies on the day you use the image, because those pages are the only documents that count.
For informational purposes only. This is not legal advice; licenses, terms of service and the law on AI-generated images change, and anyone who relies on an image commercially should consult a licensed attorney.
Sources
- Unsplash, Unsplash License: https://unsplash.com/license
- Pexels, License: https://www.pexels.com/license/
- Pixabay, License summary: https://pixabay.com/service/license-summary/
- Google, Terms of Service: https://policies.google.com/terms
- Google, Generative AI Prohibited Use Policy: https://policies.google.com/terms/generative-ai/use-policy
