Can you use AI-generated images on your business website?

Ascent Vision · Published October 24, 2026

As general advice, a generated image is often fine as decoration or illustration if the tool's terms allow business use and you never pass it off as real work, a real team or a real customer. The U.S. Copyright Office's position is that copyright does not extend to purely AI-generated material, so you may not be able to claim copyright in such an image. This is a plain summary, not legal advice.

What the Copyright Office says

The Office published Part 2 of its report on copyright and artificial intelligence, on the copyrightability of AI outputs, on January 29, 2025. Among its conclusions: copyright does not extend to purely AI-generated material, or to material where there is insufficient human control over the expressive elements. It says that with current generally available technology, a prompt alone does not give enough control.

The report also says that using AI tools to assist rather than stand in for human creativity does not affect protection for the output. People are entitled to copyright in their own work that can be seen in an AI output, and in their creative selection, arrangement or changes to it. Whether a person's contribution is enough is decided case by case, and the Office says the courts will provide further guidance.

What that means for an image on your site

As general advice, treat a purely generated image as one you may not be able to stop others from copying. If a person adds real creative work, such as creatively selecting and arranging many elements, or changing it substantially, the Office's position is that protection may cover that human contribution, not the generated parts alone.

The honesty line

This part is general advice, not the Office's position. A generated image is usually fine as decoration or illustration, but it is not evidence. Never present one as your own finished job, your crew, your office, your vehicle or a customer, and never use one in a before-and-after pair. A picture of a crew or a job that does not exist is a false claim about your business. If a generated image could be mistaken for a photograph, consider saying that it is generated. The related answer on website photos covers which real photos to use.

Check the tool's terms first

Whether the terms allow business use on your plan, and whether they require credit.
What the terms say about who owns or may reuse the images you generate.
As general advice, keep a note of which tool made each image and when, with a saved copy of the terms as they stood.
Avoid images that look like a real person, a known character or another business's logo.

A different question

This part of the report is about whether AI outputs can be protected. The Office treats the training of AI models on copyrighted works in a separate part, released so far as a pre-publication version. Whether a generated image might too closely resemble someone else's work is a different question, which this answer does not cover. This is a plain summary, not legal advice.

Sources

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