Every picture on your website was made by someone, and almost all of them are protected by copyright from the moment they were made. Whether an image is bought, “free”, “royalty-free” or generated by AI, the question that matters is the same: can you show, today, that you are allowed to use it?

A picture on your site is never “just a picture”

In Australia, copyright arises automatically when a photograph or illustration is created. There is no registration, and no © symbol is needed. Putting an image on a website copies it and makes it available to the public, and both of those are rights that belong to the owner unless they have licensed them to you. Licensing is how photographers and illustrators earn a living, which is why a surprising number of businesses discover, sometimes years later, that an image they thought was fine has no paperwork behind it.

This article is general information, not legal advice. If you have a specific claim or a licence you are unsure about, speak to a lawyer who knows copyright.

Common assumptions that cause the trouble

“It came up in Google Images.” A search result is an index of what exists, not a licence to use it.
“I credited the photographer.” A credit is not permission. Some licences require one, but it never replaces the licence itself.
“There was no watermark or copyright notice.” That proves nothing. Social networks, editing tools and image optimisers routinely strip the notice from the file.
“My web designer, or the last agency, supplied it.” You are the one publishing it. Ask for proof of the licence, in your name or the business’s.
“It has been on the site for years.” Time does not create a licence, and claims often arrive long after publication.
“I didn’t know.” Not knowing is not a defence to infringement. It can affect what a court awards, but it does not make the use lawful or stop a request to remove the image.
“It’s fair use.” Australia has no general fair use rule. Fair dealing covers a short list of purposes, such as research or study, criticism or review, parody or satire, and reporting news. A decorative image on a business website rarely fits.

Licence types in plain English

Royalty-free usually means you pay once, or nothing, and do not owe a fee each time you use the image. It does not mean free of conditions. Look for limits on print runs, resale, use on products or templates, “editorial use only” images, sensitive subjects and the number of people who can use the licence.
Rights-managed means a licence for a specific use, period and territory. Using the image outside those terms needs a new licence.
Creative Commons is a family of licences. CC BY requires credit, SA requires you to share your version on the same terms, NC does not allow commercial use (a business website is commercial) and ND does not allow changes such as cropping or recolouring. Where a licence requires credit on the page, the credit has to be on the page. CC0 is a public-domain dedication with no conditions.
Free stock sites such as Unsplash, Pexels and Pixabay generally allow commercial use without permission, but each has its own licence, the terms have changed over time, and the licence does not clear the people, brands, artwork or property that appear in a photo.
Editorial-only images can illustrate news and commentary, but not advertising or promotion.
Your own and commissioned photos are safest when the licence is written down. Do not assume you own the copyright in photos you paid for. Agree in writing who owns them and what you may do with them.

A person holding a digital camera whose screen shows the photo they have just taken

Keep a licence file for every image

When someone asks where an image came from, the best answer is a record made on the day you downloaded it. For each image, keep:

where it came from, and who made it;
the licence name and version, and the date you accepted it (a screenshot or PDF of the licence page, because pages change);
the invoice, licence number or subscription it was obtained under, and whose account that was;
where on the site it is used.

Store that record in the Media Library, against the image, rather than relying on the file. Optimising or converting an image usually strips the copyright and credit embedded inside it. Recording the source in the Media Library, and not as a caption on the page, keeps the page clean and still leaves a paper trail. If a licence does require a visible credit, show it.

Then look at what is already live. Start with images whose file names look downloaded or copied, images with a stock agency’s name in them, and anything nobody can account for. Replace what you cannot evidence.

AI-generated images raise their own questions

Hands typing on a laptop keyboard at a desk, representing writing a prompt for an AI image tool

Who owns it? Australian copyright generally needs a human author who contributed independent intellectual effort. An image produced almost entirely by a machine may not be protected at all, which means you may not be able to stop others copying it. This has not been tested thoroughly in Australian courts, and the US Copyright Office has taken a similar position that prompts alone are not enough.
What do the tool’s terms allow? Rights to use the output commercially come from the provider’s terms, and they can differ between free and paid plans. Save the terms and note the plan and date when you generate an image.
Does it resemble something else? Generators can produce images that echo existing artwork, characters, logos or real people. How training data was gathered is the subject of litigation around the world. Some providers offer indemnities on certain paid plans, so read the conditions.
Does it show real people? Do not use AI to invent staff, customers or testimonials, or to depict a real person without consent. Misleading imagery can fall foul of the Australian Consumer Law, which prohibits misleading or deceptive conduct.
Is it true to what you are selling? An AI image of a product, a result or a before-and-after that does not match reality is a claim, not decoration.
Is it labelled? Many platforms ask for realistic AI content to be marked, Google Merchant Center asks that AI-generated product images keep their embedded metadata, and content credentials such as C2PA are becoming common. Check the rules wherever the image will appear.
Do you have the record? Keep the tool, version, plan, date, prompt and any edits, alongside the usual licence file.

A practical way to think about it: treat an AI image like a stock image from a source with unusual terms, not as something you created from nothing.

If you receive a claim about an image

Claims about unlicensed images often arrive as a polite request for proof of licence, with a deadline. Do not ignore it, and do not pay or admit anything in a panic. Find the image and the page it is on, look for your licence file, and reply within the deadline. A clear paper trail is the fastest way to close the matter. If you cannot show a licence, consider removing or replacing the image while you resolve it, and get legal advice before agreeing to any payment.

Paying for images is not the problem

The answer to a claim is not to give up on photography. Real photographs of your team, premises and work usually do more for a business than stock, and commissioning a local photographer for a few hours can cost less than people expect. Licensed stock is cheap compared with the cost of a dispute. Photographers depend on licences being respected, and businesses that respect them are the ones photographers want to work with.

How we handle it, and where AI-O Image Slim helps

On our own site we use royalty-free images and record each one’s source in the Media Library metadata, not on the page. AI-O Image Slim, the image plugin we build, includes an Image sources check for the same job. It reads the copyright and credit stored with each image, its file name, title and caption, and any source you have recorded. It lists images that carry someone else’s notice, name a stock agency, or have no recorded source, and lets you record where a whole group came from in one step. The list downloads as a CSV, and each listed image has Search for this image links that open Google Lens or TinEye in a new tab, so you can see where else it appears online. The plugin itself sends nothing: the image’s address only goes to the search service when you click. A match is a lead, not proof, and no match is not clearance. It is a risk check, not legal advice, and it cannot tell you an image is cleared.

Image files can carry other risks too. An SVG is code rather than a picture, and it can hold scripts that run in a visitor’s browser. A separate SVG check under Disk & clean-up lists the SVG files already in your Media Library that contain scripts or other active content, with who uploaded each and when. It only reads: it never edits, sanitises or deletes a file, and finding nothing is not a guarantee that a file is safe. For new uploads, a plugin that sanitises SVGs, such as Safe SVG, is still the right tool, and SVG uploads should be allowed only for people you trust.

If you would like help working out where the images on your website came from, get in touch.

Using Images on Your Website: Licences, Royalty-Free and AI-Generated Images