AI images earn more on Adobe Stock, while UK photographers report lost work

Images made with artificial intelligence (AI) can earn more than regular images on the stock photo site Adobe Stock. That's according to an analysis from Stock Performer, an analytics group for stock media, as reported by Notebookcheck. At the same time, a British photographers' association says some of its members believe they have lost work to AI.

About 4.5 times as much per image

Stock photos are images that photographers and others upload to a site so businesses can buy a license to use them. Adobe Stock is the only major stock photo site that accepts AI images from contributors.

According to the analysis, an AI image earned an average of about $0.17 per month. For non-synthetic images, the figure was about $0.0375. That is roughly 4.5 times as much.

Per download, earnings were about $1.94 for AI content versus $1.22 for other content, or roughly 1.59 times as much. The share of images with at least one sale was 13 percent for all content and 9 percent when adjusted for synthetic media.

Contributors fell into two groups: those who stuck with about 90 percent traditional content, and those who switched almost entirely to image generators. Few fell in between.

A thin data set

The analysis is based only on a subset of Adobe Stock contributors, namely those who are also customers of Stock Performer. About 13 percent of them use AI tools. Notebookcheck points out that the results are far from conclusive proof that AI is taking over stock photo sales, and that the data set is still thin. The figures show earnings per image, not the total value of original content.

British photographers report losses

The Association of Photographers (AoP) has about 3,000 professional members in the UK. The organization conducted comparable surveys in 2025 and 2026. The report "Brave New World? Justice for Creators in the Age of AI" was published in January 2026 as part of a coalition of five organizations, including the Society of Authors and Equity.

According to coverage in London Freelance, 58 percent of the members surveyed have lost commissioned work to generative AI, in both 2025 and 2026. The average income loss among those affected was about £35,000 in 2026, compared with about £14,000 in 2025. Members' ability to license images fell by 65 percent.

A full 99 percent say their work has been scraped for AI training, that is, used to teach AI models. 98 percent want compensation for past infringements.

AoP's Isabelle Doran has calculated the losses for the estimated 50,000 professional photographers in the UK at about £1.745 billion, or £1.88 billion using median revenue. That is an extrapolation from member figures, meaning a calculation rather than something measured. The survey is also self-reported among AoP's members.