If you pay for a Midjourney subscription, you own the images you create. If you use the free plan, Midjourney owns the images and only gives you a non-commercial license to use them.
This analysis describes what Midjourney's agreement states, permits, or reserves. It does not constitute a legal determination about enforceability. Regulatory applicability and practical outcomes may vary by jurisdiction, enforcement context, and individual circumstances. Read our methodology
The clause creates distinct intellectual property regimes tied to payment status, determining whether users hold copyright to outputs or operate under a non-commercial license from Midjourney. This directly affects permitted use cases, commercialization rights, and asset disposition across the user base.
Interpretive note: The legal validity of copyright ownership in AI-generated outputs is unsettled in the US and other jurisdictions; Midjourney's claimed ownership over free-tier content may face challenge depending on regulatory and judicial developments.
Midjourney removed substantial sections from its Terms of Service covering age requirements, content rights, DMCA policy, dispute resolution, payment and billing, and community guidelines. The removal of these section headers and their substantive content means users no longer have explicit written guidance on these critical areas within the primary terms document. This creates operational uncertainty about what terms now govern these areas: whether they were relocated to separate policies, consolidated elsewhere, or eliminated entirely cannot be determined from this change summary alone. The absence of explicit terms on dispute resolution, age verification, and content rights represents a material change in contractual transparency.
View change record →Free-tier users do not own their generated images and are restricted to non-commercial use under a Creative Commons license, which means they cannot sell prints, use images in client work, or incorporate them into commercial products without upgrading to a paid plan.
How other platforms handle this
As between you and OpenAI, and to the extent permitted by applicable law, you retain any rights you have in the content you submit to our Services. OpenAI will assign to you all of its rights, title, and interest, if any, in and to the output of the Services generated in response to your input (the ...
Notwithstanding anything to the contrary herein, you acknowledge and agree that you shall have no ownership or other property interest in your Account or API keys, and you further acknowledge and agree that all rights in and to your Account or API keys are and shall forever be owned by and inure to ...
As between the parties, Luma owns and retains all right, title, and interest, including all related intellectual property and proprietary rights, in and to the Aggregated Data and Usage Data (including any improvements, modifications, and enhancements thereto), the know-how and analytical results ge...
Monitoring
Midjourney has changed this document before.
Receive same-day alerts, structured change summaries, and monitoring for up to 25 platforms.
"Subject to the above license, as between you and Midjourney, you own all Assets you create with the Services, provided that you have subscribed to a paid plan. If you are using the Services under a Free plan, Midjourney retains ownership of all Assets generated, and grants you a license under the Creative Commons Noncommercial 4.0 Attribution International License.— Excerpt from Midjourney's Midjourney Terms of Service
REGULATORY LANDSCAPE: Copyright ownership and assignment in AI-generated works is an evolving area of law; the US Copyright Office has issued guidance indicating that purely AI-generated works without sufficient human authorship may not be eligible for copyright protection, which could affect the validity of Midjourney's claimed ownership over free-tier outputs. EU copyright law similarly requires human authorship for copyright subsistence. GOVERNANCE EXPOSURE: Medium. The ownership split is operationally clear in the document but legally uncertain given the unsettled nature of AI-generated content copyright. Businesses relying on Midjourney for commercial content production should obtain paid subscriptions and maintain records of subscription status at time of generation. JURISDICTION FLAGS: The legal validity of copyright assignments in AI-generated content varies by jurisdiction. In the US, the Copyright Office's current position limits protection for purely AI-generated works, which may affect how courts interpret Midjourney's claimed ownership. EU and UK legal frameworks may differ. CONTRACT AND VENDOR IMPLICATIONS: B2B contracts that incorporate Midjourney-generated assets should include representations and warranties about subscription status and commercial use rights at time of generation. Procurement teams should verify that employees generating assets for commercial use are on paid plans. COMPLIANCE CONSIDERATIONS: Legal teams should document subscription tier at time of content generation for commercial assets. Where content will be used in client deliverables or licensed to third parties, legal review of the Creative Commons license terms and paid tier commercial rights is recommended.
Full compliance analysis
Regulatory citations, enforcement risk, and due diligence action items.
Free: track 1 platform + weekly digest. Monitor: 25 platforms + same-day alerts. No credit card required.
Compliance Governance Intelligence
Need to monitor specific governance provisions?
Compliance includes provision-level monitoring, governance timelines, regulatory mapping, and audit-ready analysis.
Built from archived source documents, structured governance mappings, and historical version tracking.
The clause creates distinct intellectual property regimes tied to payment status, determining whether users hold copyright to outputs or operate under a non-commercial license from Midjourney. This directly affects permitted use cases, commercialization rights, and asset disposition across the user base.
Free-tier users do not own their generated images and are restricted to non-commercial use under a Creative Commons license, which means they cannot sell prints, use images in client work, or incorporate them into commercial products without upgrading to a paid plan.
No. ConductAtlas is an independent monitoring service. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Midjourney.