Raster and vector are not the same thing
Image generators hand you a raster image: a grid of pixels at a fixed size. A logo has to be vector: mathematical curves and fills that scale to any size without ever going soft.
This is not format snobbery. Your logo is going to be the same file in a website icon, on an invoice header, on the side of a van and on an embroidered shirt. A raster image does exactly one of those well — the size it was made at.
Why that is a problem for a logo
There are four very practical consequences, and you can run into all of them in the first month.
- You cannot send it to a printer. Printers ask for vector files, and not out of politeness: the edge of a raster logo looks ragged even at small sizes.
- You cannot recolour it. In a vector file colour is a property you change. In a raster file colour is a million pixels that have to be repainted.
- There is no single-colour version. And you will need one: for a stamp, a fax, embroidery, engraving, the dark version of your website.
- Fine detail disappears. What looks delicate at 1024 pixels is a grey smudge in a 32-pixel browser icon.
Auto-tracing does not rescue it
The obvious idea is to convert the finished image into vector automatically. That feature exists, every serious graphics program has it — and its own vendor documentation tells you where the limit is: tracing loses detail, cannot produce gradients, and a hand-drawn result comes out better.
The same documentation specifically recommends drawing logos by hand instead. That is a curious situation: the vendor of the feature is telling you not to use it for the one thing most people want it for. In practice a traced logo either comes out complicated and messy, with several hundred unnecessary curve points, or, once simplified, loses whatever made it good.
There is one exception
One provider has built a model that produces vector output from the start: it does not draw an image and convert afterwards, it generates editable curves. Their own description calls this unique on the market, and practical experience backs that up: the result really does open in a vector editor, and really is editable.
That option does not solve the other two problems coming up in a moment — and it does not hand you a finished identity either. It gives you a vector starting point that a designer still has to clean up: optimising the curves, harmonising the sizes, drawing the small-size version separately, all of it stays handwork. For an overview of which tool is for what, picking an image tool has the comparison.
A trademark is a different question from copyright
This is where most people conflate two separate things. Copyright belongs to the creator of a work, and on an AI-made image, under the current position, it typically does not arise at all — who owns an AI image goes through that part in detail.
A trademark runs on quite different logic: it does not protect the creative act, it protects the fact that in the marketplace the mark points to you. What trademark protection requires is distinctiveness and commercial use — not a particular author, human or otherwise. Which leads to an odd result: an AI-generated logo can be registered as a trademark while no copyright sits on it at all. The contradiction is real, and none of the big offices has issued guidance on it so far. Today that is uncertainty rather than prohibition — but if you are planning to register, factor it in.
The resemblance that is not a coincidence
The other risk is more practical. The model works from what it has seen, and it has seen an enormous number of logos. Ask for a "modern, clean, blue, technology" logo and there is a good chance you get something that already exists — not through copying, but because it is moving inside the same visual vocabulary.
The legal consequence is unpleasant: in a trademark infringement case independent creation is not a defence. If yours is confusingly similar to something registered earlier, that is infringement even if you never saw it. So a clearance search cannot be left out of the logo workflow. The European office has offered a pre-filing screening service since 2025 that flags the obvious conflicts before you file — worth starting there, before anything goes to print.
What it is genuinely good for
None of this means leaving AI out of brand work. There are four things it is decidedly useful for.
- Exploration. Twenty directions in five minutes, so you can see which visual language suits the brand. A designer works faster when there is something to nod at.
- Mood boards. Colour world, texture, photographic style — that part of an identity generates beautifully, and it does not need to be vector.
- Supporting elements. Patterns, background textures, icon moods, illustrations for the website: these are perfectly usable as raster.
- Applications. Mock-ups carrying the finished logo, packaging concepts, shop-window designs — for presenting, not for manufacturing.
Common misconceptions
- "High resolution solves the scaling problem." It does not. A 4000-pixel image is still raster, so it falls apart on a billboard just the same.
- "I wrote the prompt, so the logo is mine." Copyright and trademark are two separate questions, and the prompt on its own creates neither.
- "AI makes something original, since it does not copy." It does not copy, but it gives back the statistically most common solutions — which is exactly why the collision risk is not small.
- "A vectoriser will sort it out afterwards." The vendor's own documentation says that is not the right route for a logo.
What to take away
The logo is the point where AI helps with the thinking rather than the execution. For exploration, mood direction and supporting elements it is excellent; the final mark is still worth having drawn by hand, in vector, and screened for conflicts before you file. That is the difference between a few hundred euros now and a rebrand several years later.