Image search is surfacing non-free licensed images, despite license filters

KagiForMe

Search for something, e.g. Taylor Swift, with filters that only allow licensed images.

Some of the images are not usable/have no license. In this case, we have images from:

https://www.vogue.mx/estilo-de-vida/articulo/taylor-swift-biografia-canciones-y-outfits (Vogue, Getty Images)
https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Taylor-Swift/dp/B001I1SFCA(Amazon??)
https://www.glamour.de/artikel/ageism-taylor-swift-kein-kompliment-sondern-eine-beleidigung (getty)
...

Here a screenshot of all copyrighted images above the fold:

Some observations on the results:

Instagram (where no rights are specified, but they surely are non-free). Not in this example, but overall a lot.
Some tabloid papers/paparazzi sites/blogspot/... either with a clear "stock image from" or "all rights reserved".

In my example, the region is de, but this happens with !int as well.

Note that "Modify (commercially)" should be the strongest option. With less strict filters this issue gets even worse.

This issue makes the feature kinda useless, as it is not really reliable. All the genuine results are from Wiki Commons anyways 9most of the time).

No copyrighted images appear.

Jake-Moss

When filtering for images of a specific license, the results contain images which are not under that license. It looks like Kagi is displaying an image of an AD from a page with a under the license.

Relevant search https://kagi.com/images?q=fish+skeleton+drawing&license=public
Results contain this image

It links to this site, https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=204609&picture=fish-bones
The image on that page is different than the one displayed in the results. Instead the image can be found my hitting the play-like button on the right menu
https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/stock-photos.php?hleda=fish+bones+illustration

The image displayed in the results in on that page, which links to an Adobe stock photo page charging for the image

KagiForMe

I have already submitted this issue here: https://kagifeedback.org/d/2964-image-search-is-surfacing-non-free-licensed-images-despite-license-filters

@Vlad, consider mergeing this to my post 🙂

Jake-Moss

Hmm I think there is a slightly distinction but certainly related and worth merging. The issue I was running into was that Kagi was finding a page with an image that was licensed how I requested, however it was grabbing the wrong image from that page.

KagiForMe

Yes, indeed slightly different, but related. Apparently, the license filter seems to be somewhat buggy.

Luis

We have implemented measures to address this issue, though it has not been fully resolved. The challenge arises from one of our upstream data providers, who occasionally allows images to bypass the image license filter. We have informed them about this problem. Unfortunately, until they resolve it, we are unable to fully fix it on our end without discontinuing content from that provider.

But we expect that the issue will now be significantly reduced -- please let us know if that isn't the case.

KagiForMe

Luis This is already an improvement of the situation. Thank you for reaching out to them and actually addressing the problem 🙂