You Need To Remove All Stock Photos From Your Blog Immediately

Nothing makes a blog post pop like a photo. It draws the eye of the reader and tells them what your blog is about. “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

Like most people, we go through images online and download the one that speaks to our blog posts. Some of us “protect” ourselves by only using copyright-free images that we pay a license to use.

Photos, like music and writing, are copyright-protected; if you pay a license fee, you pay for using that photo. If you obtained it from a copyright-free site, you have the right to use it freely. And if you took it off the web, who will find it? Well, not so fast, photo pilferer. There is a new sheriff in town.

With the advent of AI doing a whole bunch of tasks in the writing world, it would happen eventually that something intended for good would be used otherwise.

Queue the AI Copyright Trolls.

There are a bunch of copyright AIs trolling the internet looking for photos we may or may not have the copyright to, and if they find one, they want proof that you hold the copyright. If you can’t provide that info, they demand money, or legal action will be brought against you.

Do these trolls have the right, or is this all a big scam?

Well, here is how this whole thing works. Photographers upload up to 500 free images to a site such as CopyTrack, and their AI will scan the internet for those images. If it finds any of those images, it threatens legal proceedings if you don’t pay a licensing fee.

Copytrack, based in Germany, claims to have successfully brought litigation against offenders in eighty countries, including the US.

Even if you have legally purchased a picture from a site, they will still send you a threatening letter demanding you prove you have the right to use that photo.

If you can’t remember where you got that photo or can’t find the purchase receipt, you have to pay a fee or face a lawsuit.

You Need To Take This Drastic Step Immediately

I would advise removing all your questionable photos from your web page. If you did not take it yourself, dump it.

WordPress makes it easy because you don’t have to go to each blog post to remove a pic. Go into your settings and Media, and you will be presented with every photo you uploaded to your blog. Click “select,” then click on every image you are unsure about, then click on the garbage can icon to delete them all.

What are your alternatives to using these photos?

Use the photographs you took, or use an AI image-generating site to create a custom picture.

The days of freely using stock photos without consequence are over. With the rise of AI copyright trolls scouring the internet for unauthorized images, bloggers and website owners must take immediate action to protect themselves from legal ramifications and financial penalties.

Removing stock photos from your blog is not only prudent but also necessary. You safeguard your content and reputation from legal disputes and copyright claims by deleting questionable images and relying on alternatives such as your own photography or AI-generated images.

While it may require some effort to sift through your media library and replace images, the peace of mind and security gained far outweigh the inconvenience. Embrace this opportunity to enhance your blog’s originality and authenticity while respecting photographers’ creative rights. Take the necessary steps today to remove stock photos from your blog and pave the way for a more legally compliant and original online presence.