Three stock libraries drew three different lines around AI images

The process wall

A buyer's assumption that 'stock' means one thing breaks at the point of checking where a given library stands on generated images, because the major platforms have chosen three different rules instead of converging on one. The check a photo desk needs to make before licensing anything is a compliance read of a specific platform's current policy, as retrieved on 16 September 2026, not an aesthetic judgement, since none of these positions is settled by law and all three can change.

What the documents show

Adobe's generative AI content policy accepts contributor-submitted AI images but requires a Created using generative AI tools checkbox before submission, bars prompts naming real artists, real people or copyrighted characters, and separates asset types so photorealistic results are filed as Photos and stylised results as Illustrations. Shutterstock's contributor FAQ takes the opposite position, stating it will not allow AI-generated content to be submitted by contributors, because it cannot prove ownership of a generated image or verify every artist whose work shaped it. Getty's own announcement of its in-house generator states that images made with it will not return to the Getty or iStock libraries for others to licence at all — a third position that keeps generated images out of the resale marketplace regardless of who made them.

Authorship and limitation

The mechanism dividing these three policies is provenance verification, not taste. Adobe can label because it built its generator on its own licensed catalogue and controls the submission form, but it still cannot verify a contributor's separately generated image against an outside tool, so it relies on a checkbox and keyword filtering rather than technical proof. Shutterstock avoids the verification problem by refusing the category outright. Getty avoids it by keeping its own tool's output out of the resale pipeline, so no verification is needed because nothing it generates becomes a licensable asset there. None of the three claims to have solved attribution for a generated image; each has drawn its licensing boundary at a different point around the same unsolved problem.

What survives

A buyer checking a licence should read the specific platform's own label rather than assume 'stock photo' guarantees a camera was involved. Editorially, a checkbox label is a contributor's self-declaration backed by keyword filters and moderation, not an independent audit, so a client requiring proof of a real, unmodified scene should ask for more than a platform's generative-AI flag.

• Check whether a specific stock platform's current policy accepts, labels or refuses contributor-submitted generated images.
• Ask what a generative-AI label actually verifies, and what it does not.
• Compare how each platform treats its own in-house generator's output differently from contributor submissions.

Because each of these is a living policy rather than a fixed statute, the honest reading is a snapshot of what the three platforms permit, label or refuse as retrieved in September 2026, open to revision at any of their next updates.