Best AI Models for Images

The best AI for images that an SME meets today are six: Midjourney for aesthetics, the generation of OpenAI inside ChatGPT, Google models in the Gemini app, Adobe Firefly, Ideogram for text inside images and Stable Diffusion for those who want to install the model in the home. Quality is high everywhere now. What separates them, for those who work, are the conditions: who is the image, who can see it, what happens if someone disputes the rights.

Two identical images may have different legal destinies depending on the plan with which you generated them. A company above a certain revenue threshold that uses Midjourney with a basic plan does not own what it generates; the prototype of a packaging created with the default settings becomes visible to everyone. Here you will find these rules, verified on the official pages, before the advice on which tool to use for which job.

Model or app: why the same tool may have different rules

The model is the engine that generates the image, the tool is the app you use it with, with its plans and rules. It seems a distinction from technicians, but decides the rights. Adobe's Firefly app, for example, today offers both Adobe models and partner models such as Google, OpenAI, Black Forest Labs, Kling and Runway. Adobe states that its models are trained on licensed content, such as Adobe Stock, and on public domain works, and provides an intellectual property allowance on some enterprise plans. For partner models he writes instead that it is up to the creator to assess whether they are suitable for commercial use.

Even the names deceive. Many guides still talk about DALL·E, but OpenAI has shut down DALL·E models in their APIs on May 12, 2026 and indicates GPT Image models as an alternative. If you follow a tutorial, check that it describes the tool as it is now. The underlying operation of these systems is explained in Generative AI: what it is, while the way to write requests is in AI prompt for images.

The conditions to read before publishing, tool for tool

The column that counts is the third. None of these conditions are seen in the demo on the site, and all change over time: before an important project read the official page, not an article.

The million threshold and public images by default

The detail that surprises most is a figure that returns. In Midjourney terms a company, or its employee, with more than a million dollars in revenue a year must have a Pro or Mega plan to be the owner of the images. Community license of Stability AI is free under the same threshold, and above requires Enterprise license. Also Topaz Photo, program to enlarge and clean up photos, grants with the Personal plan limited commercial use to organizations under a million dollars in revenues, while the Pro plan grants it full.

The second detail concerns confidentiality. On Midjourney the content is public and remixable by default, and Stealth mode is reserved for Pro and Mega plans; even on Ideogram the images are public except for the private generation, where the plan provides for it (Ideogram FAQ). For a product not yet launched, a trial packaging or a work covered by confidentiality with a customer, this is enough to exclude the basic plans.

Who owns an image generated and when it should be declared

Since 10 October 2025, copyright law has protected works of human creativity even when they are created with the help of artificial intelligence tools, provided they result from the author’s intellectual work. The amendment comes from Article 25 of Act 132 of 2025. In practice an image coming out of a one-line prompt is hardly your work, and a competitor could reuse it; if instead there is a recognizable creative work (chosen among many variations, composition, retouching, editing with real photos) your position is strengthened. It is a prudent reading: limit cases are dealt with in copyright and AI-generated content.

Then there's transparency. The AI Act requires vendors to mark synthetic images in a machine-readable format: Adobe's Content Credentials and Google's SynthID watermark are examples of this marking. Who uses the images, that is your company, must declare as artificial a content that realistically portrays existing people, places or events and that would seem authentic (Article 50 of EU Regulation 2024/1689, applicable from 2 August 2026). For systems placed on the market before 2 August 2026, the Regulation 2026/1744 gives suppliers until 2 December 2026 time for marking; the obligation to declare against those who publish does not change. The other obligations for a small business are summarized in AI Act: what obligations does an SME really have.

Retouching a real photo instead of generating it from scratch

For many SMEs the most useful job is not to invent an image, but to fix the ones it has. Adobe has also brought Content Credentials to Photoshop generative functions such as generative fill, which adds or removes elements in an existing photo. The Gemini app edits photos uploaded with written instructions, such as changing the background or replacing an object, and the Canva editor has a photo generator and photo editing with AI; function names and plans change often, so check what your subscription includes.

Resolution is the limit that is discovered in typography. Google APIs, for example, generate at 1K, 2K or 4K depending on the model (documentation): for a post little is enough, for a manifesto no. Before sending to print check the real pixels of the file and, if needed, use a magnification program, checking the commercial license of the plan as seen above.

Advertising, product cards, posters: which tool for which job

Three concrete uses, with their traps

A furniture e-commerce has pictures of the sofas on a white background. Instead of generating made-up products, the team starts from the actual photo and builds around a credible living room with generative filling or editing the Gemini app. The product remains the real one, and the customer does not receive a different color than the one he saw. To bring these images into the cards, it also counts how the store is built: we talk about it in the page on the e-commerce.

A real estate agency, on the other hand, wants to show how it will become an apartment to renovate. A rendering generated from the photos of the real property realistically shows an existing place in a state that does not yet exist: it easily falls under the definition of deepfake of the AI Act and should be labeled as a simulation, also to avoid deluding those who buy.

Finally, a manufacturing SME wants consistent images for the technical catalogue without sending reserved drawings to external services. Stable Diffusion on an internal server resolves the confidentiality, but with revenues above the threshold it serves the Enterprise license of Stability AI, in addition to someone who manages the installation.

In design flows, it also counts where credit is consumed. The transition to general availability of Figma AI Design Agent and Integrated Weave Tools requires to distinguish the pool of Figma Design from that of Weave standalone and verify the cost of the operation.

For material received from third parties, new public access to SynthID Detector adds a check on supported watermarks. It is a source signal to read with other elements: a negative result does not prove that the image is authentic or freely reusable.

Before publishing a generated image

• Does the plan you use grant ownership and commercial use to your company, given its revenue threshold?
• Was the image generated in private mode, if the project is confidential?
• Have you used a vendor model or partner model with different rules?
• Does it realistically portray existing people, places or events? Then it should be declared as artificial.
• Does it contain trademarks, characters, or recognizable styles of other authors?
• Are the source metadata still in the file?
• Did you save prompts, tool, plan, and date, and the discarded variants that document your work?

Choosing the tool is the easy part. The part that protects the company is to decide in writing which plans to use, who approves the images and what is retained. If you want to set these rules for your team, Giallo Studio It helps you choose tools and write in-house usage instructions.