Finding Images

Artificial Intelligence, "Leonardo da Vinci drawing style" an image created by the Midjourney AI art tool. Search results in Google Lens.

Artificial intelligence technologies for image creation and analysis are making a huge impact on art, design, and the study of art history. What does this mean for academic research and for academic content creation? When using images in your scholarly work remember these key points:

Authenticity: When you use an image in your research, you must know and cite the source of that image. When using a general search engine, like Google images, always fact check your images and find the original source. These tools can help:

• TinEye Reverse Image Search. Submit an image to TinEye to find out where it came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or to find higher resolution versions.

• Google Lens. Google Lens lets you search by image. Using a camera or an image, Google Lens can try to find the original source of an image, or discover visually similar images and related content, gathering results from all over the internet. 

• Content Authenticity Initiative Verify. Verifies digital provenance and inspects Content Credentials in detail. 

Pro tip: If these reverse search engines do not find a source, or any similar images, that can be a red flag that they are AI generated.

Image created with Procreate, Midjourney; Photoshop [generative expand]; 2025

Copyright and Ethics: Who owns the rights to an AI created image?

AI image generation tools new and copyright guidelines are still evolving. These tools should be used with caution when you are including Ai generated image sin your research. 

In early 2025 the U.S. Copyright Office released Parts 1 & 2 & 3 of the Report on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence which includes the most current guidelines on Digital Replicas, Copyrightability, and Generative AI Pre-Training [for GenAI image generation tools]. Their page also includes a useful policy statement for Copyright Registration Guidance for Works Containing AI-Generated Materials.

Remember: When using images in your academic work it’s vital that you know the exact source of the image to determine authenticity and copyright. Use image databases curated by the library. Use reverse image tools to authenticate sources for images and always cite that source.

Articles and Resources on AI Generated Art & Copyright

• Adobe Firefly. Adobe firefly creates image based on text prompts. Firefly is trained on the Adobe stock image library (with creator permission) and public domain images. This tool also adds content credentials to each generated image, making the source metadata of the image transparent. Firefly is free for NYU affiliates to download as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud suite of tools.

• Midjourney. Midjourney is one of the most popular AI image generators. Access is through the web or the Discord app. The dataset(s) used to train this tool is not transparent, however Midjourney has been known to use the LAION dataset in the past. The LAION dataset uses copyrighted material.

• Leonardo AI: This tool offers a free plan with fast image generation and options to choose custom styles and models. Its training data is not transparent, but likely contains copyrighted material. 

• Stable Diffusion: An open-source model offering extensive customization and flexibility. It's available free through platforms like DreamStudio and Hugging Face, and many third-party tools are built upon it. 

• Canva's AI Image Generator: This tool is integrated within its design platform and caters to users creating marketing design assets with features for editing and customization.

Glaze. The Glaze project is a free tool developed at the University of Chicago to protect artists from having their work scraped and used by AI image generators. Glaze adds hidden (pixel) data to digital works and online images to 'confuse' AI scraping programs. 

Nightshade. Developed by the University of Chicago, Nightshade disrupts AI image datasets by adding 'poison pill' data that leads the AI image generator to misidentify images and concepts. 

Have I Been Trained. This online tool allows anyone to upload an image to discover if their work or personal photographs have been used in AI training datasets.

The Cottingley Fairies: “There are fairies at the bottom of our garden,” announces the opening line of a poem by Rose Fyleman published in 1917

"Deepfakes" and altered images are not a new thing - they have been around since the birth of photography. Read about the curious case of the Cottingley fairies where manipulated photographic images fooled the masses. 

There are currently no completely reliable tools to detect AI generated images or deepfakes. As AI generated images evolve, tools for verifying image content are being rapidly developed. These tools are very new and work imperfectly at this time. Use these tools thoughtfully and critically. Here are a few resources for tracking these tools. : 

• Deepfakes Tracker Research Portal: The Deepfakes Tracker Research Portal is a project of the Social Media Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University. The portal is designed to serve as a resource for policymakers, researchers, journalists, the public, and other stakeholders to learn more about deepfakes and manipulated or out-of-context media and narratives in our information ecosystem.
• MIT Media Lab: Detect Deepfakes Project: Resources on how to detect deepfakes and counter misinformation created by AI.

• The University at Buffalo Media Forensic Lab - Deep-Fake-O-Meter: [free - requires registration] An audio detection tool from the University at Buffalo.