#Image Use and Rights

Photobots turns an image you choose into the energy field where its bots live. This page explains what happens to that image and what to consider before choosing one.

#Decorative Artwork Is Interpretive

Artwork used as page decoration or in social-media cards and link previews is an artistic interpretation of Photobots themes. It is not a screenshot or literal representation of the simulated bots, their anatomy or behaviour, their world, or simulation output. Images explicitly identified as simulation captures or gallery works are described separately.

#Your Image Stays Local

The public Photobots app prepares the selected image in your browser. It does not send the image to a Photobots server, and selecting it does not add it to the public gallery. Normal requests for the app, its worker code, and its WASM engine still occur.

A downloaded Photobots Patina Pack also remains local. Creating one asks your browser to download the registered images and their evidence; it does not submit the pack, transfer rights, request review, or publish a Gallery Work. If you complete the optional Gallery preparation form, the same local download also contains draft permission records for you to inspect. Those files are marked as draft review material; creating them does not approve their wording or change the no-submission boundary.

#Choose an Image You May Use

Choose an image you created or one you have permission to reproduce, alter, transmit, and display. Copyright ownership and authorship are different facts: having a copy of an image does not necessarily make you its author or rights owner. Consider any required credit and whether altering the work could affect the creator's attribution or integrity rights.

Photobots cannot decide whether a particular image is lawful for you to use. You remain responsible for the image you choose and the way you use any output.

#Public Gallery Works Are Curated Separately

Visitor sessions are not published automatically. A work enters the public gallery only after a person selects the exact registered Original and Patina, checks their evidence, and records a basis for using the source artwork in the gallery.

The gallery's Original is the registered simulation baseline after image preparation. It may differ in dimensions and bytes from the source file. The source artwork's human author and copyright owner remain identified separately where known.

#The Status of a Patina

A Patina is the registered Original after Photobots activity, with its included world and bot-body layers stated for that work. The project does not assume that this process creates separate copyright, or that Photobots itself is a legal author. Each published work states whether a Patina copyright claim is unasserted, pending legal review, or asserted on a recorded basis.

This information describes the project's process. It is not legal advice and does not grant a licence to third-party material.