Stock site stops AI‑generated images

PIXTA said it will stop accepting new artificial intelligence-generated images and videos on April 20, 2026, and will stop selling existing ones on May 22. (pixtastock.com) The company said all content uploaded with its “AI checkbox” checked, and all works labeled “AI-generated,” will be deleted when the policy takes effect. PIXTA posted the notice on April 14, 2026. (pixtastock.com) PIXTA also published new rules the same day defining what counts as artificial intelligence content, including prompt-made images, image-to-image transformations, generative compositing, inpainting, outpainting, fully generated video, face replacement, and artificial intelligence-made audio. (pixtastock.com) PIXTA runs what it calls Japan’s biggest stock marketplace for photos, illustrations and footage, and its English-language site says it offers more than 115 million files. The company is based in Shibuya, Tokyo. (pixtastock.com; pixta.co.jp) The change lands after two years of stock platforms trying to sort artificial intelligence uploads from camera-made or hand-drawn work. PIXTA’s notice says the shift follows customer demand for human-made material rather than a technical change in how the site works. (pixtastock.com) That distinction has commercial weight because buyers use stock libraries for ads, websites, packaging and television, where licensing certainty matters as much as image quality. PIXTA says its files are sold for those professional uses under royalty-free licenses. (pixtastock.com; stockanalysis.com) The legal backdrop is still unsettled in some markets, but the United States Copyright Office says copyright registration requires human authorship and that applicants must disclaim more than a minimal amount of artificial intelligence-generated material. Congress’s research service summarized the same rule in 2025. (copyright.gov; congress.gov) PIXTA is not leaving artificial intelligence entirely. A separate service, PIXTA AI, markets training datasets for machine learning models, even as the stock-image marketplace moves in the opposite direction on generated visuals. (pixta.ai) For contributors, the deadline is now close: new artificial intelligence uploads stop on Monday, April 20, and existing sales end on Friday, May 22. For buyers, PIXTA is betting that “human-created” is a product category customers will pay to keep separate. (pixtastock.com)