I limit my Do-It-Yourself activities to handyman tasks at my home and studio. Surgery, Tax Accounting, Dentistry, Vetinary services for my cat and critical LEAGAL matters go to the experts.
Yes, there are new technologies that may impede your copyright protection. It used to be that dishonest clients or who knows who, could pop your work in a Xerox machine and use or sell it illegitimately. Nowadays, anything you put online becomes fair game for the poachers. How can you prevent somebody on another continent from messing with your images? Well, don't put important stuff online!
So now the Boggyman is AI. As if someday soon the robots will kidnap photographers, scan them in their 3-D printers, and replicate them so they don't need to hire and pay them anymore!
So, here is the drill. If you are concerned about the unauthorized use of your imges by clients, software providers, or other outsourced service providers that you use in the production of your work to the degree that these activities will affect your income, reputation, business, integrity of your art or product, you'll have to consult a lawyer who is an expert in copyright law and find out how to prevent any kind of pirating, theft, plagiarism, or whatever perils you can think of, of any of your images, in whole or in part.
A lawyer can advise you and help you include clauses in your contracts with clients to address these issues. You can find out IF various "cloud" or storage services have the right to use or extract any part of your images. There could be "small print" in their paperwork or online permission to allow them to tamper with your stuff.
All of this is important IF you sell your work on a commercial basis to clients or as fine art, and if this work represents a
significant percentage of your income. Legal fees can be expensive, but not as costly as bringing a lawsuit against a violator, going to court, and sustaining all the aggravation. If you do not take preventative measures, the eventual and cumulative loss of income will outweigh the cost of sound legal advice.
If, however, you do not sell your work, in any manner speaking, and all that gets injured is your ego, all of the above is moot- and in the venerable words of Alfred E. Newman, "Waht Me Worry"!
Ed Shapiro. Commercial & Portrait Photographer. Ottawa, Ontario Canada