Summer '92
Birthday party
Beach vacation
Halloween '88
First day of school
Family road trip
Grandma's house
Little league
i was cute
Your childhood photos, legally licensed
Remember when you were adorable? So does the internet. I was Cute helps you upload your childhood photos, verify who holds the copyright and likeness rights, and license the results to advertisers, publishers, filmmakers, and AI companies — with royalties paid to you, not a stranger who found the photo on the internet.
How it works
Upload
Drag & drop your childhood photos — prints, scans, or phone shots
Copyright Check
We verify who holds the copyright — you, a family member, or the photographer
Likeness Release
Sign a simple digital release so buyers can license legally
Earn
Royalties are paid out to your account every time a license is sold
Why licensing (not just sharing) matters
Old family photos are being scanned, uploaded, and reused every day — in stock libraries, nostalgia feeds, and increasingly as training data for AI image models. Most of the time nobody asks first, and nobody gets paid. Two different rights are usually in play: the copyright in the photograph itself (which belongs to whoever took the picture, often a parent or a studio photographer) and the likeness of the person or people pictured. Both usually need to be cleared before a photo can be licensed responsibly.
I was Cute walks you through both. During upload we ask who took the photo and whether you have permission to represent it, then we ask the person (or people) pictured — or their guardian, for childhood photos — to sign a plain-language likeness release specifying how the image may be used: editorial, commercial, or AI training. Only photos that clear both checks are eligible to be licensed through the marketplace, and every sale pays a royalty back to the rights holder.
We're a small, pre-launch project — the license marketplace is still being built out (see Browse), and the review queue is handled by hand while volume is low. If you have questions before you upload anything, read our Privacy Policy or get in touch.
Those photos deserve more than a dusty drawer.
Upload one, clear the rights, and see what a license is worth.