I Got Paid $1,500 For A Stolen Photo

Let me try this again without AI.

One day I was scrolling through a google image search of a ship I worked on and noticed one of my photos being used commercially. I got on and looked and it had already been used for 4 months on one of the companies press releases.

I used AI to assist me in coming up with the legal wording for an invoice and to write a professional email stating that this was an invoice for retroactive license of my photo that was used without permission.

Initially they just replied back apologizing for using it claiming it was an error and used as an internal place holder until they got the image from the cruise line to use. Told me it had been removed and thanked me for informing them. I told them thank you for removing it, however the invoice was for retroactive licensing for 5 months that the photo was published for without any credit.

A couple days later they told me that they would move forward with payment. I had my doubts but yesterday the $1,500 was in my account.

Hindsight is 20/20 but feel like I could’ve asked for a little more. However I was a little nervous at first because I didn’t thing anything was going to happen, let alone get paid for it.

Make sure if this happens to you, you pursue payment! The company obviously thought it was valuable enough to use on a press release.

For those asking on the previous post. Here is the photo

https://imgur.com/a/nZAV5mv