You Can Sell What You Generate Here. Most Generators Do Not Let You.
By The Fellowi Team · · 6 min read
Read the terms of a few image generators and you find the same paragraph in different costumes: a free tier that is personal use only, a commercial licence sold separately, an attribution requirement, a revenue share above some threshold, a clause that lets the provider train on your prompts and another that lets them use your outputs in marketing.
Ours says this:
We claim no ownership of what you generate in the studio or through the API, and we place no restriction on commercial use: you may sell it, put it on a product, use it in client work, or publish it. We take no share and require no credit.
That is the whole clause. It is in the terms, not in a sales page, which is where it has quietly been while everyone assumed otherwise.
What it means on an invoice
You pay for a generation once, in coins, at the price on the product page. There is no second payment when the picture starts earning. A freelancer billing a client for a set of concepts does not owe us a cut. A shop putting a generated background on a product listing does not need a licence key. An agency does not have to explain to procurement why the image tool wants a percentage.
It also means no attribution line. You are not required to write "generated with Fellowi" under anything, and we do not ask for a link. If you want to say it, that is your decision and not a condition of use.
The three things it does not mean
A permissive licence is not the same as a guarantee, and a company that blurs the two is setting you up. Here is the honest part.
One: we do not warrant that you own the copyright. We claim nothing, which is not the same as handing you something. In several countries a work produced purely by a machine, without meaningful human authorship, may not qualify for copyright protection at all. That is the state of the law rather than anyone's policy, and it is worth understanding before you build a brand on a single generated asset. We wrote about it at length in who owns AI-generated images.
Two: there is no exclusivity. Another user writing a similar prompt may receive a materially similar result. Generating something does not reserve it to you. For most commercial work this does not matter - nobody else is generating your client's kitchen in your client's brand colours - but it matters a great deal if the plan was to own a look.
Three: a real person's face is not yours to use. If you upload someone's photo as a reference, you need their permission and the rights to use it. "We generated it" is not a model release, and no clause in our terms creates one. This is the constraint that catches commercial work most often, because it is the one that feels solved and is not.
Who this actually changes things for
Someone making pictures for themselves never noticed the restriction in the first place. The people it changes things for are the ones who had to check: the freelancer who wanted to put concepts in a deck, the small shop that cannot afford a photo shoot for every seasonal listing, the studio that wanted to try a tool without a procurement conversation about licence tiers.
If that is you, the practical next questions are what it costs at volume - the coin packages go up to tiers sized for a team - and how to wire it into something automated, which is what the public API is for.
The two products this applies to are Fellowi Images for stills and Fellowi Video for clips - the same licence covers both.
Questions this post answers
Can I use Fellowi images in paid client work?
Yes. Our terms place no restriction on commercial use: you may sell the output, put it on a product, use it in client work, or publish it. We take no share and require no credit.
Do I need a different plan or a commercial licence?
No. There is no separate commercial tier and no upgrade that unlocks selling. The coins you spend on a generation are the whole price, whatever you do with the result afterwards.
Does that mean I own the copyright?
No, and no generator can promise you that. We claim no ownership, but in several countries work produced by a machine without meaningful human authorship may not be protectable at all. That is the state of the law, not our policy.
Keep reading
Wiring an AI Image API Into an Agency Pipeline: Keys, Ledgers and Archives
The API docs tell you how to make one picture. An agency needs to make thousands for a dozen clients without losing track of who paid for what. Six rules from the way the API actually behaves.
What a Team Actually Spends on AI Images: Reading the Bulk Coin Packages
A coin price is not a budget. The unit a team should plan in is the finished asset, and the packages built for teams only pay off once you know your own keeper rate. A method in four steps.
A Face for a Brand That Cannot Afford a Model: AI Avatars for Small Shops
A candle shop, a bakery, a one-person studio: a recurring face makes a small brand's feed feel like somebody runs it. Where an AI presenter helps, where she backfires, and how to keep her the same.