The digital media landscape has unlocked new opportunities for creators, but it has also multiplied challenges around ownership, attribution, and piracy. Once an image or video is shared online, it can be copied endlessly, stripped of credit, and repurposed without permission. For photographers, designers, and creative studios, this raises critical issues.
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are emerging to meet the challenge. The original discourse on NFTs seemed to focus on their role as digital collectibles but they represent so much more. NFTs are blockchain-based certificates of authenticity. They create verifiable proof of who owns a digital file, when it was minted, and how it has been transferred, ensuring that attribution and ownership remain intact wherever the asset travels.
A powerful example of NFTs applied to media comes from the Associated Press (AP), one of the world’s most respected news agencies.
In 2021, AP launched “AP ARTiFACTS: The 175 Collection” , an NFT series auctioning reinterpretations of its most iconic photographs, including Joe Rosenthal’s Pulitzer Prize-winning image of U.S. soldiers raising the flag on Iwo Jima. Each NFT was more than just an image: it combined the original negatives, rare prints, and archival metadata. Buyers were not purchasing a JPEG, they were acquiring a verified slice of history, underpinned by blockchain.
Building on this success, AP launched its own NFT marketplace in January 2022, releasing both contemporary and archival images, such as award-winning photos of the La Palma volcanic eruption. Every NFT came embedded with rich metadata, the time, location, and camera settings, thereby preserving attribution and context.
Importantly, AP’s model shared revenue with its photographers, ensuring they benefited directly from both first-time auctions and secondary sales. For photographers, this demonstrated a new way to protect their ownership and earn recurring income from their work, even after it entered circulation.
NFTs offer creators more than novelty. They:
For example, a freelance photographer could mint images of unique events as NFTs, ensuring recognition and receiving revenue not simply on initial publication but on every secondary sale.
How LettsCore Brings This into Everyday Workflows
While AP’s experiments highlight the potential, most creators do not have the resources to build custom marketplaces or mint tokens manually. That is where LettsCore steps in.
LettsCore integrates NFTs directly into its AI + blockchain-powered CMS. Every media asset created in the platform can be automatically tokenised, embedding attribution and securing ownership from the start. Smart contracts make it easy to set royalty rules, protecting creators against lost credit and missed income.
This means photographers, designers, and creative studios can access the same protections as global agencies but without the complexity.
Conclusion
NFTs represent a fundamental shift in how media assets are owned, protected, and monetised. The Associated Press has already shown how iconic photojournalism can be reimagined and secured through NFTs. With LettsCore, we are making sure every creator can harness that same power, embedding protection, attribution, and monetisation directly into their media workflow. Sign up now at LettsCore and get 2000 free credits.