AI owns the catalogue. It does not own the download ranking
The same generative-AI flag, counted twice: once over everything that exists for a subject, once over what actually gets downloaded.
Measured · SincereTrend
- 75.8%
- AI share of the catalogue, for the median keyword
- 14.0%
- AI share among that keyword’s most-downloaded works
- 1,198
- keywords where both AI shares are measured
Every count of AI in a stock library measures the same thing: what has been uploaded. That is the shelf. It says nothing about what comes off it, and the two are not the same question — the first is about how much work exists, the second about what a buyer picks when shown it. Adobe happens to publish enough to ask the second one.
Its illustration results can be ordered by download count. Re-running an identical query that way and counting the same generative-AI flag over the first page gives the AI share of the most-downloaded work for that subject. Read against the catalogue share, the pair is a contrast no single ranking can produce.
The headline
Across 1,198 subjects where both readings exist, the median catalogue is 75.8% AI-flagged and the median download ranking is 14.0%. 82.9% of those subjects have a majority-AI catalogue; 8.6% have a majority-AI download ranking.
| Percentile | Catalogue | Bestsellers |
|---|---|---|
| 25th | 57.0% | 7.0% |
| Median (50th) | 75.8% | 14.0% |
| 75th | 87.8% | 27.3% |
The widest gaps
Ordered by the distance between the two readings rather than by either one. The bottom of the bestseller distribution on its own is uninformative — dozens of subjects tie at 0-1%, and some of them have low catalogue shares too, so they show nothing. These do.
| Phrase | Catalogue | Bestsellers |
|---|---|---|
| chief | 96% | 3% |
| cold and flu | 93% | 1% |
| frontier | 94% | 3% |
| granddaughter | 98% | 8% |
| hardware | 96% | 6% |
| green meadows | 96% | 6% |
| blueprints | 95% | 5% |
| white horse | 98% | 9% |
Where AI owns the ranking too
The obvious objection to everything above is that a download ranking is cumulative, so older work has an advantage from age alone. It is a fair objection, and this table is what survives it: if the figure only measured age, nothing could sit here.
| Phrase | Catalogue | Bestsellers |
|---|---|---|
| chunky knit blankets | 100% | 99% |
| amigurumi | 95% | 92% |
| muted winter palette | 98% | 90% |
| christmas themed scene | 96% | 86% |
| security camera footage | 97% | 86% |
| scavenger hunt | 99% | 86% |
| swiss village | 97% | 85% |
| biophilic design | 93% | 84% |
What those subjects share is that the PHRASE is recent. "Chunky knit blankets", "muted winter palette", "biophilic design" are aesthetic terms whose demand appeared after generated work was already cheap, so there is no older catalogue for age to favour. Where a subject is genuinely new, generated work reaches the top of its ranking as readily as anything else.
By category
No category is anywhere near as generated at the till as it is on the shelf, and the ordering rhymes with the catalogue study: patterns and lettering least saturated, travel and people most.
| Category | Keywords | Bestsellers (weighted) | Bestsellers (median) | Catalogue (median) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lettering & Typography | 13 | 6.2% | 5.0% | 61.7% |
| Patterns & Backgrounds | 29 | 10.3% | 5.0% | 47.0% |
| Technology & Internet | 27 | 14.7% | 7.0% | 59.0% |
| Retro & Vintage | 15 | 9.7% | 9.0% | 71.1% |
| Nature & Landscape | 64 | 15.1% | 9.0% | 67.7% |
| Education & Science | 26 | 16.3% | 10.5% | 78.5% |
| Botanical & Floral | 44 | 14.0% | 11.5% | 73.0% |
| Sports & Hobbies | 41 | 18.8% | 12.0% | 83.7% |
| Business & Work | 58 | 18.1% | 13.0% | 77.7% |
| Wedding & Celebration | 11 | 21.6% | 14.0% | 75.0% |
| Health & Wellness | 47 | 22.5% | 14.0% | 88.0% |
| Kids & Nursery | 25 | 23.0% | 14.0% | 78.9% |
| Animals & Pets | 63 | 21.6% | 15.0% | 76.3% |
| Holidays & Seasons | 41 | 24.1% | 15.0% | 75.0% |
| Fantasy & Mythology | 40 | 19.5% | 17.0% | 72.2% |
| Culture & Folk Art | 122 | 23.6% | 20.0% | 79.1% |
| People & Lifestyle | 44 | 24.7% | 20.0% | 86.7% |
| Food & Drink | 50 | 25.5% | 21.1% | 76.4% |
| Travel & Places | 59 | 27.8% | 22.0% | 79.6% |
Method and limits
- Sample: 1,198 subjects with at least 500 Adobe Stock illustrations, an AI reading on or after 2026-08-02, and a download-ranked page of at least 20 assets. Below 20, one atypical page swings the share by tens of points.
- It is a download RANKING, not sales. Nobody here has access to anyone's sales figures, including our own users'. Adobe orders results by download count and we count the flag over that order; what we cannot see is revenue, licence type or who bought anything.
- The ranking is cumulative, so work predating generated files carries an advantage from age alone. That confound is real and we have not corrected for it. The eight subjects at 84-99% are the reason we publish the figure anyway: they are all recent phrases, with no older catalogue for age to favour.
- 89.0% of this sample is tier A, meaning subjects with demand we have already measured: the download-ranked read costs a second page load per subject, so it is rationed. This describes the measured head of the corpus, not the corpus.
- Weighted across every sampled asset rather than every subject, the figure is 20.5% rather than 14.0%, so the subjects with the most AI among their bestsellers also tend to have the fullest sampled pages.
- Adobe Stock only, illustration only. It is Adobe's own flag, so it inherits whatever Adobe's labelling misses, and Shutterstock, iStock and Etsy publish no AI flag at all — none of this extends to them or to photography.
Both readings are free on every keyword page — browse the corpus, or read how much of the catalogue is AI for the other half of this pair.