Who Pays If the AI Shot Gets You Sued? The Indemnity Follows the Door, Not the Model

"Commercially safe" is a marketing phrase. An indemnity is a contract term, and in 2026 the contract follows the door you walked through, not the model you used. The same Veo shot can be covered, partly covered or not covered at all depending on whose account generated it, and almost none of the cover reaches the claims an ad is most likely to attract.

Our position: treat vendor indemnity as a thin layer of copyright cover, never as clearance. Map every AI shot in a job to the door it came through, and do not promise a client anything your vendor has not promised you. A note before we start: we are a post-production desk, not a law firm, and nothing here is legal advice. Read the terms yourself, and get a lawyer to read them before you sign anything that repeats them to a client.

Door one: Adobe, for its own models

Adobe's Firefly product description lists the "Eligible Firefly Features" it indemnifies, including Text to Video, Image to Video, Generative Fill and sound effects. Three conditions matter:

• Your agreement has to point to it. The page applies "if your agreement with Adobe includes a link to this page's URL". In practice that means an enterprise or qualifying business plan. Adobe's Creative Cloud Pro Plus for teams FAQ promises indemnification only for "select" Firefly outputs. If you are on an individual plan, assume you have no cover until you find the clause that says otherwise.
• Non-Adobe models are out. Anything the interface labels as powered by a non-Adobe model is excluded, and so are features marked "beta" or "trial".
• Cover starts at export. The indemnity is tied to "Export Events" from listed surfaces such as the Firefly website, Premiere and the Firefly APIs.

Within those limits, the Firefly Video Model is the cleanest option on the market. Macworld's August 2026 review describes its output as "covered by Adobe's IP indemnification".

Door two: Adobe, for Google and OpenAI models

This is the door most people misread. Adobe's page on partner models in Firefly Creative Production for Enterprise says Adobe indemnifies "certain copyright infringement claims" for generally available Google and OpenAI models used through that enterprise product. The models listed are Gemini 3 and 3.1, Veo, and OpenAI's GPT image models. The limits:

• It covers copyright only. Trademark, publicity rights and privacy claims are explicitly excluded.
• Beta, preview, early-access and other pre-GA model versions are excluded.
• Bring your own API key through a custom node and you are under the provider's own terms. No Adobe cover applies.
• Other partners are not on the list. Models such as Runway and Kling, which Firefly also offers, get no cover through this door.
• Cover can fall away if you "knew or should have known" an output was infringing, lacked rights to your input, or ignored the safety features.

Door three: going direct

• Google Cloud. Google's list of indemnified generative AI services (updated 20 July 2026) includes Veo, Imagen and Gemini through its enterprise API, which was formerly Vertex AI, but only for generally available model versions. Google has said since 2023 that it will not cover customers who intentionally use output to infringe, as Justia reported. A Veo preview model, or Veo inside a consumer subscription, is a different door. Check before assuming cover.
• OpenAI. The service terms (version dated 29 September 2026) indemnify API and ChatGPT Enterprise, Edu, Healthcare and Business customers against IP claims on output. Exclusion (iii) is the one post houses should frame and pin above the desk: no cover where "Output was modified, transformed, or used in combination with products or services not provided by or on behalf of OpenAI". A graded, cropped, comped frame cut into a timeline is modified and combined by definition. Trademark claims arising from use in commerce are excluded, and so are beta services. We found no indemnity for Sora or consumer ChatGPT plans in those terms.
• Runway. The terms of use (updated 15 September 2026) leave your outputs with you and do not restrict commercial use. The indemnity runs the other way, though: you indemnify Runway for claims arising from your content and your use of the service. Enterprise contracts may be negotiated differently. We have not seen one.
• Luma. The terms of service (updated 14 May 2026) also make the customer defend Luma against claims arising from input or output. Commercial use needs a paid plan. An aggregator's pricing guide says Free and Lite are non-commercial and only Enterprise guarantees your data is not used for training (unverified against Luma's plan pages).
• Kling. We could not load Kling's own terms to check the direction of its indemnity. Until you have read them, treat Kling output as uncovered.

The gap nobody covers

Line up the exclusions and a pattern appears. Every vendor indemnity we read is mainly about copyright. Ads, though, get sued over faces, voices, logos and products: a generated extra who looks like a real actor, a voice that sounds like a famous presenter, a background sign carrying a real brand. Those are publicity, privacy and trademark claims. Adobe excludes them outright for partner models, and OpenAI excludes trademark use in commerce. The cover is also conditional on behaviour that is hard to prove after the fact, such as not knowing, using the filters, and not modifying the output.

What to do on Monday

1. Log the door for every AI shot. Record the model, version (GA or preview), the account that generated it (Adobe enterprise, Google Cloud, a personal subscription, an aggregator) and the export date. Without that record, no indemnity claim is possible.
2. Prefer covered doors for hero shots. Use Firefly's own models or GA Google/OpenAI models through an enterprise contract. Keep uncovered tools for mood boards, previs and plates you replace.
3. Clear likenesses, voices and marks yourself. No vendor does it for you. Run the same review you would run on stock footage.
4. Do not pass on what you do not hold. Do not sign a client clause that warrants AI output is "non-infringing" or "fully indemnified". A safer pattern is to disclose which shots are AI-generated and through which service, pass through whatever vendor cover exists to the extent the vendor terms allow, and state that likeness, voice and trademark clearance is handled under the normal clearance process. Have counsel draft the actual wording.
5. Re-check quarterly. At least four of the documents above were updated between July and September 2026. Save a dated PDF of the terms on the day you generate.