Can I use AI images on my website?

The copyright question doesn’t work in your favour

If the image likely doesn’t attract copyright because no identifiable human author shaped its original expression, the flip side matters too: your business has no exclusive right to stop a competitor from using an identical or very similar output either. Copyright works both ways — the same authorship gap that clouds your protection also weakens anyone else’s claim against you for using a similar AI image.

Some image tools now attach voluntary provenance metadata to what they produce. The industry coalition behind the standard describes Content Credentials as functioning “like a nutrition label for digital content, giving a peek at the content’s history available for anyone to access, at any time.” Nothing in Canadian law requires you to attach or preserve that metadata before publishing an image.

Where ordinary advertising law still applies

The rule that actually governs an AI image on a commercial website predates AI entirely. Canada’s Competition Act “prohibits misleading advertising and deceptive marketing practices across the country,” and that general principle catches a materially false representation made to the public regardless of how it was produced.

An AI-generated “photo” that shows a product feature you don’t actually offer, or a generated “customer” dressed up as a testimonial, is caught by the same rule that would catch a staged or doctored real photograph — the method of creation isn’t the issue, the false impression is.

In practice

Use AI images freely for illustration, backgrounds, and general marketing visuals. Be careful only where the image itself asserts something specific and untrue about your product, your customers, or your results — that’s an advertising problem no different from a staged photo, not an AI-specific one.

Whether you need to disclose that an image is AI-made is a separate question — see whether AI content needs a label and whether AI output needs attribution.