Apr 2024 your work, their model
EyeEm licensed users’ photos to AI
Photos trained AI unless you opted out, and the community exodus that followed didn’t bring the images back.
Kelp Market · For creators · 2026
Your photos train AI.
Get your cut.
Platforms licensed your work to AI for nothing. Kelp Market pays you half of every license — per asset, proven by the camera that took the shot.
ed25519 proofs · PRNU sensor fingerprinting · free verification
Specimen How it works ● Local-first
The full journey
From your drive to your payout
Specimen From drive to payout ● who does what
Shots sell one by one or bundled into datasets — either way, 50% of every license is yours.
The problem
They already took your work
Ongoing your work, their model
Free-license feeds, zero pay
Unsplash and Pexels photos power training sets at scale. The license was free; the models built from it are not.
2023 → your work, their model
Firefly competes with its contributors
Adobe trained Firefly on Stock uploads, then sold the generations against the people who shot them.
The archive
The photos you never uploaded
are worth the most
Everything you ever posted got scraped, licensed, or trained on. But the shoots that never left your hard drive? No model has seen those. Not once. The selects you didn't post, the outtakes, the client work that never ran. It just sits there.
That's the stuff labs actually want now. They can buy scraped internet anywhere. What they can't buy is images nobody has, from a photographer who can prove they took them. You already shot that. It's worth money as-is.
dead weight · never uploaded · never seen
no model has
ever trained on it
The deal
50% of every license.
Per asset.
Every dataset sale splits 50/50: half to Kelp, half to the creators who shot it — divided by asset. Each asset pays its creator 50% of the price that asset fetched in that sale. Contribute more assets, or shoot gear that verifies at a higher tier, and your share grows. The same dataset selling again pays again.
one dataset · one sale per-asset split
dataset sale $10,000
creator pool — 50% $5,000
creator A — 400 assets $2,000
creator B — 200 assets $1,000
creator C — 50 assets $250
1,000 assets · ten creators · the same dataset selling again pays again
Reference points
What platforms pay
Kelp Market
50%of every license
verification is free — we recoup costs from our half.
Getty
15–20%creator share
typical non-exclusive rates; exclusive iStock tiers reach 45%.
Adobe Stock
33%creator share
the reference everyone else anchors against — flat rate on photos, vectors, illustrations; 35% video.
Sources: Adobe Stock royalty rates (helpx.adobe.com, Jul 2026) · Getty Images & iStock rate cards 2026.
Proof tiers
Stronger proof, higher price
EXIF self-reported
$0.50/asset
the words on the file say what it is.
Challenge verified
$1.00/asset
your gear answers our challenge — camera confirmed.
Sensor fingerprint
$2.00/asset
PRNU binds the image to that physical sensor.
list price per asset per license — you earn half of what your asset fetches
How it works
From camera to payout
01 — Apply as a partner
Invite-only during launch. Approved the same day; sign-in by magic link.
02 — Upload camera-originals
Run the desktop app over a folder, or upload in the browser. Either way the photos are yours and stay yours.
03 — We verify, free
Gear challenges and sensor fingerprints bind the proofs to your camera. No upload or processing fees.
04 — Get paid
Datasets license over MCP. Royalties accrue per asset in your dashboard; payouts run through Stripe.