How do I report a problem with stock images?

Anyone can report an image, and reports are read. This page explains which reasons lead to action, what information makes a report useful, and what to expect afterwards.

Reasons that lead to action

• The image resembles a real, identifiable person. The library is AI-assisted, and no real person was photographed, but a generated face can occasionally look like someone who exists, especially a public figure. If you recognise a person, say who, so the resemblance can be checked.
• It contains a trademark, logo or brand name. Images are meant to ship clean. A recognisable mark on a bag, a screen or a shop front is a defect and will be removed or the image withdrawn.
• The content is offensive or unsafe. Anything sexualised, hateful, gratuitously violent or otherwise unsuitable for a general audience should not be in the catalogue.
• There is a rendering defect. Extra fingers, warped text, a broken horizon, a limb that goes nowhere. These slip through review sometimes and are worth flagging because they make the image useless.
• It looks copied from someone's work. If the image reproduces a recognisable artwork, photograph, character or composition, report it with a pointer to the original.
• The tags are wrong or misleading. An image of a lighthouse tagged desert, or a sombre scene tagged cheerful, wastes the time of everyone searching. Tag reports are quick to act on.

Reports that fall outside these categories are still read, but "I do not like it" or "my competitor is using it" will not lead to removal.

What to send

Three things make a report actionable.

The page address or the slug. Every image page has a slug in its URL, and the downloaded file is named after it, so if you only have the file you can still identify the page. A screenshot on its own is far less useful than a slug.

The reason, in a sentence or two. Name the category from the list above and add the specific detail: which public figure, which brand, which tag is wrong and what it should be.

A way to reply. Reports without a contact are still processed, but if the resemblance is unclear or the original work needs a second look, a return address lets us ask.

Send that to the contact route listed in the FAQ index. Keep it short; nobody needs a formal letter.

What happens next

The report is reviewed. Where the reason is confirmed, the image is either removed from the catalogue or re-tagged, depending on the problem. Trademark, resemblance, copied-work and unsafe-content reports lead to removal. Rendering defects usually lead to removal as well, since a flawed image has little value. Tag reports lead to re-tagging, and the corrected chips appear on the page and on the relevant tag pages.

Reporters are not discussed publicly. Your name, your email and the fact that you reported are not posted anywhere, not shared with anyone who has used the image, and not attached to the image page. If you provided a contact you may receive a short reply confirming the outcome, and that is the extent of it.

Removed images stop being offered for download. People who downloaded them earlier keep the file under the license they received; the site cannot and does not reach into other people's projects.

What reporting does not cover

Reporting how a third party uses an image is a matter for that third party, not the site. If a company has put a picture from this library on a poster you object to, or a blog has captioned one dishonestly, the library did not make that choice and cannot undo it. The license sets out what users may and may not do, and someone who breaches it is answerable for the breach, but the place to raise it is with them. Send a report here only when the problem is in the image itself or in how the library presents it.

Similarly, the site does not adjudicate disputes between two people who both downloaded the same image. Stock images are non-exclusive by design; two projects using the same picture is expected, not a fault.

Affordable Stock Images depends on this kind of feedback to keep the catalogue clean, and every good report improves the search results for everyone.