AI-generated images on a business website: what you can and cannot do.

The short answer

Three questions decide whether an AI image belongs on your site. Are you allowed to use it, which the tool's terms answer. Do you own it, which copyright law answers. Could it mislead a customer, which consumer law answers. The third is where small businesses get into trouble.

• Usually fine: a background texture, an abstract header, an illustration for a blog post, an icon, a seasonal banner, a concept sketch marked as a concept.
• Risky: a photo-real picture of your team, your premises, your food, your finished work, a before and after, or a happy customer. Anything a visitor could take as a record of what you really do.

Whether AI-written text hurts your search ranking is a separate question, covered in does Google penalise AI content?

What the tool's terms allow

Terms differ between tools, between free and paid plans, and over time. Before you publish, read the terms for the plan you used and check:

• Whether commercial use is allowed on that plan.
• Who owns the output, or what rights the company gives you in it.
• Whether other people can see or reuse what you made, for example in a public gallery.
• What the terms forbid, such as pictures of real people or other companies' logos.
• Whether the company offers any help if someone claims an image copies their work, and on which plans.

Save a dated copy of the terms with the prompt and the file in your image record. Terms change, and if a question comes up later you will want to know which version applied.

Why you may not own the copyright

In the US, the Copyright Office published its report on the copyrightability of AI output on 29 January 2025. It concluded that typing prompts is not enough to make you the author. Output can be protected where a human author has determined sufficient expressive elements: where a human-authored work is perceptible in the result, or where a person creatively selects, arranges or changes AI material. The Office found that existing law can handle this without changes.

The courts agree on the core point. On 18 March 2025, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the refusal to register a picture whose application named a machine as its sole author, holding that the Copyright Act requires work to be authored in the first instance by a human being. And since March 2023, the Copyright Office's registration guidance has asked applicants to disclose AI-generated material in a work they register.

In practice, a competitor could copy an AI image from your home page and you may have little to stop them with. If an image matters to your brand, such as a logo or a mascot, have a designer create it, or have them rework an AI draft so much that the result is their own work, and keep the files that show the changes. Trademark law protects a logo as a sign of your business, which is a separate question to raise with your adviser. Outside the US the position is less settled, so ask there too if ownership matters to you.

The other copyright risk: output that copies

An image you generate can still reproduce someone else's work: a recognisable character, a famous photograph, a product design or another company's logo. You are the one publishing it, so the claim would come to you, whatever made the picture.

• Do not prompt with an artist's name, a brand, a character or a competitor's image.
• Look at the result as a stranger would. Does it remind you of something you have seen before?
• Run a reverse image search on anything prominent, such as the main image on your home page.
• Never upload someone else's photo as a starting point unless you have the right to change it.

If a letter does arrive about an image, what to do when you get a copyright letter gives the order to work in.

The bigger risk: an AI picture passed off as real

For a small business the likelier problem is a customer who books because of a picture that was not real. Consumer law covers pictures as much as words:

• In the US, the FTC Act bans deceptive acts and practices, and the FTC's 2024 rule on reviews and testimonials bans fake ones, including AI-generated reviews that misrepresent who wrote them and testimonials from people with no real experience of the business.
• In the EU, the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive treats a practice as misleading if it deceives, or is likely to deceive, the average consumer about things such as a product's main characteristics, how it is carried out or the results to expect, including through its overall presentation and even when each fact in it is correct, and leads them to a decision they would not otherwise have made.
• In the UK, the unfair commercial practices rules of the DMCC Act 2024, which apply from 6 April 2025, cover deceptive overall presentation and ban fake reviews.

Pictures that cross the line in practice:

• A restaurant showing AI dishes that look nothing like what leaves its kitchen.
• An aesthetic clinic showing an AI before and after: a result no patient had.
• An estate agent showing an AI-furnished or AI-tidied room as the property, without saying so.
• A builder or landscaper putting AI images under "our recent projects".
• An AI team photo on a salon's about page, of people who do not work there.
• An AI "customer" holding your product beside a review.

The test is simple: would a customer who later saw the real thing feel misled? If so, use a real photo, or say plainly that the picture is an illustration.

Editing real photos with AI

Photo apps now edit with AI as well as generate: removing a bin from a shopfront photo, brightening a dark room, extending a background so a photo fits a banner. The same test applies to edits.

Tidying what was really there is fine. Changing what the customer is paying for is not: a bigger portion on the plate, a sea view from a window that faces a car park, smoother skin after a treatment, a lawn that was never that green.

Under the EU AI Act, an image manipulated so that it would falsely appear authentic counts as a deep fake in the same way as one generated from nothing, so an edit that changes what the picture shows needs a label for visitors in the EU. The tool makers' marking duty does not apply to tools that only assist with standard editing or do not substantially alter the photo, which is another reason to keep edits small.

Three businesses, three decisions

• A cafe wants a winter banner with snow, mugs and fairy lights. An AI illustration is fine: nobody takes it for a photo of the cafe, and it needs no label beyond what the tool adds.
• A kitchen fitter is launching a new service, fitted pantries, and has no finished job to show yet. Rather than AI pictures under "our work", it shows one concept image labelled "Design concept, not a completed job" and replaces it with photos of the first real installation.
• An aesthetic clinic wants before and after pictures for a new treatment. It uses no AI at all: only real patients who gave written consent, with the results shown as they were. Meta ads for clinics covers the ad platform's own limits on those pictures.

How we label our own examples

Our terms of use say that the examples, renders and sample conversations on ggsites.com show the kind of work we do and are not client work unless stated. Our prices page labels its worked examples as not results from our clients.

The habit carries over to any business: say what an image is wherever a visitor could take it for something else. One line of caption costs nothing and removes the question.

When AI images are the right choice

AI images do well where nobody expects a photograph of the real thing:

• Backgrounds, textures and abstract shapes behind text.
• Illustrations for a blog post or a guide, such as a cutaway of a leaking pipe or a calendar for a tax deadline.
• Icons and small decorative pictures in your own style.
• Seasonal banners and campaign artwork.
• A placeholder on a new service page, marked as an illustration until you have a real photo.
• Concept images for something not yet built, such as a garden design, labelled as a concept.

Where the image is the evidence, such as your team, your work, your premises or your results, use a photo. A real photo taken on a phone in daylight tells a visitor more than a flawless picture of something that does not exist. Our websites page asks clients for real photos of their premises, team and work for that reason: visitors spot stock photos.

When and how to label AI images

In the EU, Article 50 of the AI Act applies from 2 August 2026. A business that uses AI to generate or alter an image that resembles existing people, objects, places or events, and would falsely appear authentic, must disclose that it is artificially generated or manipulated. That is the Act's definition of a deep fake, and a realistic AI picture of a street, a shopfront or a person can meet it. For an evidently artistic, creative, satirical or fictional work, the duty shrinks to disclosing the AI content in a way that does not spoil the work. The tool makers have a separate duty to mark their output in a machine-readable way. The dates and the rest of the Act are in the EU AI Act for small businesses.

In the US, the useful question is less whether a label is required and more whether the picture would mislead without one. If it would, label it or replace it.

Labels that work:

• A caption under the image: "Illustration created with AI."
• Alt text that describes what the picture really shows.
• The tool's own label or metadata left in place.
• A sentence on your about page or in your terms saying how you use AI images.

Pictures of people, real or invented

Realistic AI people carry extra risk. A picture that shows someone using or praising your service is a kind of endorsement, and an invented person cannot give one. Never use an AI person as a customer, a reviewer or a member of your team, and never generate a real person, staff included, without their permission.

An about page works because the faces are real and customers will meet them. How to write an about page covers what to show instead.

Before you publish an AI image

• The tool's terms allow commercial use on the plan you used, and you saved a dated copy.
• It does not show your team, premises, work, results or customers as if real.
• It does not resemble a known character, artwork, product or logo.
• A reverse image search found nothing it copies, if it is a prominent image.
• Anything realistic that could pass as real is labelled, and for visitors in the EU any deep fake is disclosed.
• Your image record notes the tool, the plan, the prompt and the date.

Mistakes to avoid

• An AI team photo on the about page.
• AI dishes, rooms or finished jobs presented as your own.
• AI before and after pictures.
• Prompting with an artist's name or a brand.
• Assuming you own the copyright in an image you only prompted.
• Using an AI image as your logo without a designer's work on it.
• Removing the label or metadata the tool added.

This is general information, not legal advice. Copyright in AI output and the rules on misleading images differ between countries and are still developing. Ask an adviser before you rely on an AI image for anything that matters to the business.