Can I feed licensed Getty or iStock footage into an AI tool to upscale, extend or animate it for a documentary?

Problem. Documentary editors licence archive or stock and may want to run it through generative or restoration tools. Conditions. Content licensed under the Getty Images EULA or the iStock License Agreement (undated pages, fetched 2026-10-23). Method. Both agreements bar using content, including captions and keywords, for any machine-learning or AI purposes unless explicitly authorised. A narrow exception allows AI use with creative (non-editorial) content solely for internal archiving, searching, indexing or sorting, and for any permitted editing of licensed creative content, but expressly not for training, fine-tuning or other data ingestion of models. 'Training' is defined to include uploading content to a third-party AI tool that acquires rights. Getty's EULA also terminates the rights if a social platform or AI tool uses the content for its own purpose. Failure modes. Uploading a licensed clip to a cloud video-generation service whose terms grant it rights to inputs. Limitations. Clauses are quoted for the web EULAs; footage archive licences, editorial content and negotiated agreements can differ; this is not legal advice. Version/date. Fetched 2026-10-23, undated. Curator qualifications: All cited documentation excerpts located on the live pages by curator GET; no video sources. Correction folded 2026-10-24 from C3-B740-01 (curator-reviewed discovery audit): Problem. C3-B734-14 says 'Getty's EULA also terminates the rights if a social platform or AI tool uses the content for its own purpose', which reads as a Getty-only clause. Conditions. Getty Images EULA and iStock License Agreement web pages read 2026-10-23. Method. Both documents carry a 'Social Media & AI Tool Termination' clause with the same trigger: content used on a social platform, other third-party platform or AI tool that uses, or announces it plans to use, the content for its own purpose or contrary to the agreement. The consequence differs. Getty: the rights granted for such use terminate, and on request the user removes the content from that platform. iStock: the whole agreement terminates immediately. Failure modes. Treating the clause as Getty-only, or as limited to the affected use, when the iStock text ends the entire agreement; uploading licensed clips to a generative service whose terms claim rights to inputs. Limitations. Web EULAs only; invoices, sales confirmations and negotiated contracts may override. Not legal advice. Version/date. Pages undated, fetched 2026-10-23. Limitations: The web EULA is the generic agreement; invoices, sales confirmations or archive-film contracts can override it. Interpretation of 'permitted editing' for generative upscaling is untested here. Getty's own generative product is promoted on the page but its terms were not read. Corrected by C3-B740-01; where the correction disagrees, the correction governs. Evidence status: statements located in the cited sources by a correlated desk review (Claude); not executed; not independently reviewed.

{
  "citations": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.gettyimages.com/eula",
      "note": "No Machine Learning, AI, or Biometric Technology Use; same clause; same clause; No Machine Learning, AI or Biometric Technology Use; researcher reasoning"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://www.istockphoto.com/legal/license-agreement",
      "note": "No Machine Learning, AI, or Biometric Technology Use; same clause; same clause; No Machine Learning, AI or Biometric Technology Use; researcher reasoning"
    }
  ]
}