Acceptable Use Policy

The short version

• Upload your own face, or someone who gave you explicit permission. Nobody else.
• Never minors. Never anyone who did not consent. Never anyone for the purpose of impersonating them.
• No sexual, violent, or harassing imagery. No deepfakes. No fake IDs. No copyrighted material in the output.
• Don't scrape, fuzz, abuse-bypass quotas, or attempt to extract our models.
• Report violations to [email protected] with subject “AUP report”. We investigate within 5 business days.

Whose face you can upload

Only one of the following:

• Your own face.
• The face of a person who has given you explicit, informed, contemporaneous consent for AI-generated headshots and who is aware that the images will pass through Google's Gemini API in the process.

That is the entire allowed list. You may not upload:

• Photos of celebrities, public figures, politicians, executives at named companies, athletes, or any other identifiable person who did not specifically authorize you to use their photo here.
• Photos of strangers from the internet, social media, dating apps, public events, or sourced from any kind of scraping or web search.
• Photos of people taken without their knowledge (street photography of identifiable subjects, hidden-camera images, leaked photos).
• Photos of an ex, an enemy, a former colleague, a person you are in a dispute with, or any person you do not have the present-day right to use the image of.
• Photos used as part of catfishing, romance scams, fake-profile creation, or any pattern intended to deceive someone about who they are interacting with.
• Photos of recently deceased people, where the family or estate has not provided consent.

Personality rights, image rights, and right-of-publicity laws vary by jurisdiction but most countries protect a person's right not to have their likeness used commercially without consent. The fact that AI generated the output does not change this. Liability sits with the person who uploaded the photo and chose to generate, not with the model vendor.

Minors

FreeHeadshot is not intended for users under 16. We do not knowingly process face data of anyone under 13 and we do not allow uploads of photos of any minor under any circumstance other than this one:

• A parent or legal guardian uploading a photo of their own child (aged 13 to 17) for a clearly age-appropriate professional purpose such as a school yearbook headshot, a college application photo, or a sports team roster picture. Even in that case the output must be age-appropriate, and the same parent must be the account holder. Photos of children under 13 are never permitted regardless of the relationship.

We use automated content classification to detect and block minor-subject inputs. Detection is not perfect; if anything slips through, the human review queue will catch it and the account will be suspended permanently. Any generation involving sexual content depicting a minor is reported to NCMEC (in the US) and the equivalent national authority in other jurisdictions, without exception and without notice to the account holder.

Prohibited outputs

Even with a fully-consented self-uploaded photo, the following categories of output are prohibited:

• Sexual content or nudity of any kind, regardless of the subject's age or consent.
• Violent imagery, blood, weapons positioned at the subject, gore, injuries, or scenes that depict harm.
• Hate symbols and extremist iconography (swastikas, white-supremacist insignia, terrorist organization branding, ISIS, Al-Qaeda or similar).
• Content promoting self-harm, suicide, or eating disorders.
• Imagery that mocks, ridicules, or degrades identifiable individuals or protected groups.
• Content designed to harass any specific person, including the uploader.
• Content depicting illegal activity or providing visual instructions for illegal activity.

Our generation pipeline blocks most of these categories at the prompt-and-model layer. If anything slips past, the post-generation QA stage catches it. If somehow both layers fail and you receive a prohibited output, do not use it; report it to us at the same email and we will replace the generation.

Deepfakes and impersonation

We treat this category seriously enough that it gets its own section.

A “deepfake” for the purposes of this policy is any AI-generated image of an identifiable real person, created with the intent to deceive viewers about who the person is, what they did, where they were, what they said, what office they hold, what political opinion they hold, or what brand they endorse. Producing deepfakes through FreeHeadshot is prohibited and has been since the day we launched.

Specific prohibited use cases include:

• Generating an image of a person in a uniform, role, or context they have never occupied, with the intent to mislead viewers.
• Generating a person at a location they were never at, in support of a false claim about their whereabouts.
• Generating a person appearing to endorse a product, candidate, cause, or opinion they did not endorse.
• Generating an image to create a fake dating profile, fake social media account, fake LinkedIn, or fake media-personality persona.
• Generating an image to support identity fraud, social engineering, or financial scams.
• Generating “before and after” deceptive medical, fitness, beauty, or self-help content with the implied claim that the subject achieved a result they did not achieve.

US federal and state laws (the DEFIANCE Act, California AB 730 and AB 602, Texas SB 751, Florida HB 919, and others) impose civil and in some cases criminal penalties on deepfake creation depending on use case and jurisdiction. We cooperate with subpoenas and lawful investigations under those statutes.

Sexual and non-consensual intimate imagery

Non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII), often called “deepfake porn” in media coverage, is the worst category of misuse for AI image tools. We do not facilitate it, in any form, regardless of who the subject is.

• The studio pipeline filters sexual content at the prompt level, the model level, and the QA level.
• Any account that attempts to generate this content is terminated immediately, without warning, without refund.
• Where the subject of a generation attempt is identifiable to us as a real person other than the uploader, we report to law enforcement under the applicable jurisdiction's NCII statute.
• UK Online Safety Act 2023 and the proposed US TAKE IT DOWN Act, along with state laws across at least 49 US states, treat NCII creation and distribution as offenses. Our cooperation with prosecutors in these cases is unconditional.

ID and government verification misuse

AI-generated images are not photographs and are not accepted by any government identification authority. You may not use FreeHeadshot output for:

• Passport applications or renewals.
• Drivers' license, state ID, or any government-issued credential.
• Visa applications.
• Voter registration with photo requirements.
• KYC, AML, or financial-services identity verification (banking, brokerage, crypto exchange onboarding).
• Background check submissions where a photograph is required.
• Court filings or sworn statements where the photo is presented as the actual likeness of the filer.

Submitting AI-generated images in any of these contexts is illegal in most jurisdictions and is independently a violation of this policy.

Intellectual property

Your generated images may occasionally contain artifacts that resemble third-party trademarks, logos, brand uniforms, copyrighted artworks, recognizable architecture, or quoted text. These are statistical artifacts of the underlying model and are not licensed for any use that would infringe on the actual rights holder.

• If a generated image contains a recognizable brand logo, do not use it in commerce.
• If a generated image contains text that resembles a real signage or document, do not use it as a representation of that real source.
• If a generated image resembles a copyrighted artistic work (a painting, a famous photograph, a movie still), regenerate to obtain a clean version.
• If a generated image places you in front of a recognizable real-world location (a specific famous building, gallery, or interior), be aware that some locations have image rights and use accordingly.

We respond to DMCA notices in accordance with 17 U.S.C. § 512 and to equivalent IP takedown procedures under EU Digital Services Act Article 16 and UK e-commerce regulations. See the takedown section below.

Technical abuse

You may not:

• Bypass or attempt to bypass the free-tier rate limit by clearing cookies, rotating IPs, using VPN rotation, or any automated tool.
• Create multiple accounts to multiply the free-tier quota.
• Scrape, mirror, or republish FreeHeadshot content (style examples, blog posts, output images, comparison-page data) without permission.
• Reverse-engineer, decompile, or otherwise probe the service to extract trade secrets, prompt formats, or model weights.
• Run security scans, fuzzers, denial-of-service tools, or load tests against the service without prior written authorization (we operate a private bug-bounty channel; email us before testing).
• Use the service or its output to train a competing AI image model.
• Share a paid account or its credentials with anyone other than yourself.
• Use automated tools (bots, scrapers, scripted clients) to interact with the studio beyond the access patterns of a normal human user. Where you need programmatic access, contact us about API terms.
• Use the service in a way that disproportionately consumes server capacity, including but not limited to: bulk-uploading thousands of inputs, running parallel sessions across many accounts, or holding generation queues open across very long sessions.

Commercial use rules

Paid tier output (Snapshot, Studio, Master) is licensed for commercial use, with limits. Permitted:

• LinkedIn, professional networks, company team pages, press kits.
• Resumes, CVs, business cards, conference badges.
• Advertising, marketing, paid social, sponsored content, paid newsletters.
• Book covers, podcast cover art, YouTube channel art, magazine bios.
• Internal company use (about-us page, team directory, internal training material).

Not permitted, even on a paid tier:

• Reselling the generated images as stock photography on Shutterstock, Getty, Adobe Stock, or any equivalent marketplace.
• Bundling generated images into a competing AI headshot product (your output is licensed to you, not to a downstream product offering).
• Using the images to represent a real person other than yourself (or the specifically consented subject), regardless of the commercial context.
• Using the images in connection with anything prohibited elsewhere in this policy (deepfakes, NCII, IP infringement, ID misuse).

How violations are handled

We use a three-tier enforcement ladder, matched to the severity of the violation:

• Warning. For low-severity, likely-accidental violations (a single technical-rule breach, a misunderstood category). We email the account holder, explain what was wrong, and ask for compliance going forward. No service interruption.
• Suspension. For deliberate violations or repeated warnings. We disable generation for the account pending an explanation. Email us with the words “account suspended” in the subject; we respond in 24 to 48 hours.
• Termination. For severe violations (NCII attempts, deepfakes of identifiable third parties, minors, fraud, integration into illegal activity). The account is permanently closed. Paid balances are forfeited. Where applicable, we report to law enforcement.

Termination decisions are reviewable by emailing “account appeal” in the subject line. Appeals are read by a separate person from the one who made the original decision. We reverse appeals where the original decision was wrong; we hold them where the original decision was right.

Reporting a violation

If you believe someone is using FreeHeadshot in violation of this policy, the fastest path is:

1. Email [email protected] with subject “AUP report”.
2. Tell us what you observed and where (a URL, a screenshot, a tweet, a profile, a description of the abuse pattern).
3. If you are the subject of the abuse (the person whose face is being misused), say so. We prioritize those reports.

We investigate every report within 5 business days. Where the report is verified, we remove the offending account and any residual data, and where required by law we preserve relevant evidence for law enforcement.

Image takedown if the subject is you

If you have specific reason to believe that someone generated images of you through FreeHeadshot without your consent:

1. Email [email protected] with subject “Subject takedown”.
2. Include the image(s) you found and where you found them.
3. Include a description that establishes the subject is you (a photo of yourself for comparison, your social profile, anything that lets us correlate the generation with a complaining subject).
4. We will investigate within 3 business days, identify the source account if it exists in our records, terminate it where the report is substantiated, and preserve evidence pending any follow-up by you or law enforcement.

We do not retain face embeddings of subjects, so we cannot guarantee a 100% match between your reported image and a specific account. We can match by account-to-output linkage in our logs (each generation is tied to a specific upload session). The more identifying detail you provide, the faster the match.

Law enforcement requests

We cooperate with valid legal process from competent authorities, including subpoenas, court orders, search warrants, and equivalent instruments under EU, UK, and other applicable laws. Voluntary cooperation outside formal process is limited to cases involving imminent threats to life, NCII, or child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

Law enforcement requests go to [email protected]with subject “Law enforcement request” and must be made on official letterhead with appropriate identification. We notify the affected account holder unless the request is under a non-disclosure order or where notification would impede an active investigation.

Changes to this policy

We update this policy as new abuse patterns emerge. The “Last updated” date at the top of the page changes when we do. Material changes (new prohibited categories, changes to enforcement procedures) get at least 30 days' notice by email to paid users and by banner on the homepage.

Contact

General AUP questions, reports, or requests for clarification: [email protected]. Replies within 24 hours on weekdays. Emergency reports (NCII, minors, imminent harm) flagged with subject “Urgent” are read out-of-hours.

Related pages: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Refund Policy.