AI Image Tools for Creating Tarot Decks

The US Copyright Office's position is clear: AI-generated images without sufficient human authorship are not copyrightable in the US. That single legal fact reshapes the entire business case for AI image tools for tarot decks - because a 78-card deck of images you can't copyright is a product you can't fully protect, even if you paid $60/month for the tool that made them.

This guide covers the three dominant tools, their 2026 pricing, and the copyright situation as it actually stands.

All prices as of mid-2026. Verify current before committing.

Tool Comparison

Tool	Entry Price	Free Tier	Commercial Rights	IP Ownership	Notes
Midjourney	$10/month (Basic)	No	Yes (paid plans)	Midjourney retains display license	~200 images/month on Basic
Leonardo AI	$10/month (Apprentice)	Yes (150 credits/day)	Paid plans only	User retains full IP (paid)	Free tier: non-exclusive, Leonardo can reuse
DALL-E 3	Bundled with ChatGPT Plus ($20/mo)	Via ChatGPT Free (limited)	Yes	User retains rights	Also available via OpenAI API

Midjourney

Midjourney operates inside Discord. There is no free tier - you need a paid plan to generate images.

2026 pricing:
- Basic: $10/month - approximately 200 images per month (~3.33 hours fast GPU)
- Standard: $30/month - ~15 hours fast GPU
- Pro: $60/month - ~30 hours fast GPU, stealth mode (private generations not visible to others)
- Mega: $120/month - ~60 hours fast GPU

Annual billing saves roughly 20% across plans.

For a 78-card tarot deck, Basic at $10/month is insufficient if you need multiple variations per card before settling on a final image. Standard at $30/month gives more room to iterate. Pro's stealth mode is relevant if you don't want your in-progress deck images visible to other Midjourney users on the public feed.

Commercial rights: All paid plans include general commercial usage rights for images you generate.

The Midjourney IP caveat: Midjourney's terms of service grant you commercial rights to output, but Midjourney retains a license to display and use your generated images. This is not the same as full IP ownership.

Source: costbench.com/software/ai-image-generators/midjourney (2026); nesyona.com/articles/midjourney-pricing-2026 (2026).

Leonardo AI

Leonardo is the most generous option for experimentation at low cost.

2026 pricing:
- Free: 150 credits per day - roughly 25 images at standard quality (4-6 credits per image)
- Apprentice: $10/month - 8,500 tokens/month, private generations, 1 LoRA training per month
- Artisan: $24/month - 25,000 tokens, priority queue, API access, 5 concurrent generations, motion generation
- Maestro: $48/month - 60,000 tokens, 20 LoRA trainings

Annual billing saves 17-20%.

The IP distinction matters here: On the free tier, you get a non-exclusive royalty-free licence but Leonardo retains rights to reproduce and modify your generated images. On paid plans ($10/month and up), you retain full IP ownership and rights.

For a commercial tarot deck you intend to sell, the free tier's license terms are a problem. The Apprentice plan at $10/month resolves this.

LoRA training (available from Apprentice) is relevant for deck consistency. A trained LoRA on your chosen style means all 78 cards maintain the same visual character - something that's difficult to achieve through prompting alone.

Source: flowith.io/blog/leonardo-ai-pricing-2026-free-vs-apprentice-vs-artisan (2026); costbench.com/software/ai-image-generators/leonardo-ai (2026).

DALL-E 3

DALL-E 3 is available through ChatGPT Plus ($20/month) and via the OpenAI API. It's the most integrated option if you're already using ChatGPT for writing or interpretation work.

DALL-E 3's output style tends toward illustration and concept art rather than painterly realism - which suits some tarot aesthetics and not others. The tool doesn't support the kind of style-locked consistency that Leonardo's LoRA training enables.

OpenAI's usage policies allow commercial use of DALL-E 3 outputs.

Source: search result synthesis, 2026.

The Copyright Problem

This is the central issue that tool pricing doesn't resolve.

The US Copyright Office's current position: AI-generated images lack the "human authorship" required for copyright protection when the human's role is primarily writing prompts. The more human creative input applied - significant editing, digital painting over the AI base, compositional choices - the stronger the copyright claim becomes.

For a tarot deck:
- Prompt-only generation: weak or no US copyright on the images
- AI base + significant manual editing: potentially copyrightable (the human edits, not the AI base)
- Completely hand-drawn with AI reference: standard copyright applies

Practically: if you sell a prompt-only AI deck, another creator could replicate a similar style and you have limited legal recourse. Your written guidebook and original interpretation text remain fully protected as original written work from the moment of creation - copyright on text doesn't require registration.

Source: justanswer.com/intellectual-property-law/h5q0s-copyright-question-designed-tarot-card-deck.html (JustAnswer IP law); aiphotogenerator.net/blog/2026/02/ai-tarot-card-maker-custom-deck-guide (Feb 2026).

The Ethics Question

The tarot community has documented concerns about AI art tools trained on scraped internet images without artist consent. Benebell Wen (tarot author and researcher) wrote about this in 2022 and the piece remains widely cited in community discussions.

Source: benebellwen.com/2022/09/14/creating-tarot-and-oracle-decks-with-ai-generated-art (2022).

This isn't a legal issue - it's a community-relations issue. An AI-generated deck sold without disclosure may face backlash in niche tarot communities where the art ethics debate is ongoing. The decision is yours to make, but the reputational context is real.

Practical Recommendation

- Experimenting / prototyping: Leonardo AI free tier (150 credits/day). Understand that you don't own the output commercially.
- Producing a commercial deck: Leonardo Apprentice ($10/month) for full IP ownership, or Midjourney Basic ($10/month) for commercial rights (with Midjourney's retained display license).
- Style consistency across 78 cards: Leonardo's LoRA training (Apprentice plan minimum) is the strongest tool for this.
- Copyright protection: Manually edit the AI outputs significantly, or treat the images as unpublished reference and create final art on top of them.