Experiment: We Replaced Our Stock Photos with AI Images for a Month. Here's What Happened.

Stock photography is the visual wallpaper of the internet. It's a necessary, if often uninspiring, part of content marketing. For years, businesses have relied on subscriptions to services like Shutterstock, Adobe Stock, or Getty Images to find professional-looking images for their blogs, social media, and websites. The process is familiar: you search for a keyword, scroll through hundreds of often-cliche photos, and find one that's 'good enough'.

The rise of powerful AI image generators like Nano Banana, Midjourney and DALL-E 3 presents a radical alternative. What if, instead of searching for a photo of 'business people collaborating,' you could just create the exact image you have in your head? What if you could have a completely unique, custom-made visual for every single piece of content, for a fraction of the cost?

This promise is incredibly compelling, but is it practical? Can AI images truly replace a stock photo subscription in a real-world business workflow? We decided to run a month-long experiment to find out. For 30 days, our marketing team banned the use of stock photos and committed to using only AI-generated images for all our blog headers and social media posts. Here's our honest breakdown of what we learned—the good, the bad, and the surprisingly profound.

The Experiment Parameters

Our goal was to compare the two approaches across four key criteria:

1. Cost: How does the cost of an AI image generator subscription compare to a standard stock photo subscription?
2. Time: Is it faster to search for a stock photo or to write a prompt and generate a custom AI image?
3. Quality: How does the visual quality of the AI images stack up against professionally shot stock photos?
4. Brand Fit: How well can each method produce images that are perfectly aligned with our specific brand identity?

The Results: A Head-to-Head Comparison

1. Cost: The Clear Win for AI

This was the most straightforward comparison. A standard subscription to a major stock photo service can range from $30 to $250 per month, depending on the number of images you need. A subscription to a top-tier AI image generator like Midjourney or a paid plan for ChatGPT Plus (which includes DALL-E 3) typically costs around $20-$30 per month. For this price, you get to generate hundreds, if not thousands, of images.

From a pure cost-per-image perspective, AI is not just cheaper; it's in a completely different league. It's an order of magnitude more cost-effective.

Verdict: Overwhelming victory for AI.

2. Time: A Surprising and Nuanced Draw

We went into this experiment assuming that generating an AI image would be much faster than searching for a stock photo. The reality was far more complex.

• The Stock Photo Time-Sink: The process of finding the right stock photo can be a frustrating rabbit hole. You type in a search, scroll through pages of irrelevant or cheesy images, try a different keyword, scroll again... It's not uncommon to spend 15-20 minutes just to find one decent image.

• The AI Prompting Learning Curve: Generating an AI image is not always a one-and-done process. Your first prompt might produce a weird, unusable image. You then have to refine your prompt, add more detail, change the style, and regenerate. This process of 'prompt crafting' can also take 10-15 minutes, especially when you're first learning.

In the end, we found that the time commitment was roughly a wash. The time we used to spend scrolling, we now spent crafting and refining prompts. However, the nature of that time felt different. Prompting felt like a creative, engaging process, whereas scrolling through stock photos often felt like a mindless chore.

Verdict: A draw, but the time spent on AI feels more creative and less tedious.

3. Quality: It Depends on Your Goal

This was another area with surprising nuance.

• For Photorealism: When it comes to creating realistic images of people, stock photography is still, for the most part, superior. While AI can create stunningly realistic portraits, it still sometimes struggles with hands, subtle facial expressions, and creating a scene that feels truly authentic and not staged. Professional photographers are masters of capturing genuine human moments, and AI isn't quite there yet.

• For Illustrations and Conceptual Art: For anything that isn't photorealistic, AI is the undisputed champion. It can create unique illustrations, abstract concepts, and stylized graphics in any imaginable style. It can produce visuals that you would simply never find on a stock photo website. It unlocks a level of visual creativity that was previously inaccessible without hiring an illustrator.

Verdict: Stock photos still win for authentic human moments. AI wins for everything else.

4. Brand Fit: The Unseen, Game-Changing Advantage of AI

This was the area that surprised us the most and where AI revealed its true superpower. When you use stock photos, you are forcing your brand to fit the available imagery. You find a photo that is 'close enough' to what you want to say. With AI, you force the image to fit your brand.

This became incredibly apparent when we tried to create an image for a blog post about our company's specific values. We couldn't just search for "honesty" on a stock site. But with AI, we could craft a prompt for a conceptual image that visually represented our interpretation of honesty.

We discovered that the process of writing a detailed prompt for an AI image generator is, in itself, a powerful exercise in brand strategy. You can't just ask for "a business meeting." You have to ask yourself: What kind of business meeting? What is the mood? What kind of people are there? What is the style of the room? What is the overall message I want to convey?

AI forces you to be incredibly specific about your visual identity. It forces you to define your brand in a level of detail that you may have never considered before. This was the most profound and unexpected benefit of the entire experiment.

Verdict: A massive, game-changing victory for AI.

Our Final Recommendation

After a month, our conclusion is clear: yes, an AI image generator can and, for most use cases, should replace your stock photo subscription. The cost savings are undeniable, and the ability to create perfectly on-brand, unique visuals is a strategic advantage that cannot be overstated.

Our recommended approach is a hybrid one:

1. Use an AI image generator for 90% of your visual needs, especially for blog headers, social media graphics, and conceptual illustrations.
2. Maintain a small 'pay-as-you-go' credit pack on a stock photo site for the rare occasions when you need a specific, authentic photo of people that AI still can't quite capture perfectly.
3. Remember the legal landscape. As we covered in our AI copyright guide, you don't own the copyright to these images, so be mindful of using them for core brand assets like logos.

By making this shift, you're not just saving money; you're gaining a powerful new tool for creative expression and strengthening your brand's unique visual identity.