I just came across something that honestly caught me off guard. One of my architectural photos, which is exclusive to iStock, showed up as the background in a Seedance video on Instagram. The video itself is a random AI generated fight scene featuring Brad Pitt and Ghislaine Maxwell. Tom Cruise and Epstein also appear. My image has clearly been used as a background, partially animated, and integrated into multiple shots throughout the sequence.

It does not appear to be commercial use, but one of the Instagram accounts resharing the video has already pulled in nearly 500,000 views in the last two days. I was never contacted, and of course there was no license or payment through iStock.

Is this where things are heading? Are we expected to accept that our copyrighted content can be scraped and pulled into AI video productions, altered, and distributed widely without compensation, as long as someone labels it non commercial or simply posts it on social media?

I am genuinely curious how others are handling this, and whether stock photo agencies plan to address this kind of unauthorized use.

One of my iStock exclusive photos just appeared in an AI video on Instagram which was created with Seedance.

I would like to start a new discussion and topic to explain the situation further, but I don't see how I can start a new topic anywhere on this site.

Interesting. Thank you for sharing. I will have to take a look at mine.