Stock photography is the supply of photos that are often licensed for specific uses. While the stock of stock photos are plenty, AI is changing the way things work.
Shutterstock is one of the internet’s biggest sources of stock photos and illustrations. Founded in 2003, it has been in business supplying others with photos. And realizing the competition that sparked with generative AI products, the company is introducing its own generative AI, simply because it can.
After announcing a partnership with OpenAI back in October 2022, Shutterstock announces its own DALL·E 2-powered AI tool that is made "available to use by all Shutterstock customers globally in every language the site offers."
In the announcement:
And according to Paul Hennessy, CEO of Shutterstock:
"Our easy-to-use generative platform will transform the way people tell their stories — you no longer have to be a design expert or have access to a creative team to create exceptional work. Our tools are built on an ethical approach and on a library of assets that represents the diverse world we live in, and we ensure that the artists whose works contributed to the development of these models are recognized and rewarded."
Shutterstock boasts that its generative AI product is easy to use, as it supports more than 20 languages.
The company also said that with the AI tool, users can search for stock, create and publish winning designs, and generate content—all in one place, and that they can do what with confidence.
Using the tool is similar to other tools that are powered with OpenAI's DALL·E 2, in which users can input a text prompt for the machine-learning technology to work on.
In Shutterstock's case, every text prompt users' feed the AI will result in four images, uniquely tailored to their request.
At the bottom of the page, the site also suggests "More AI-generated images from the Shutterstock library."
The idea of using AI to create unique "art" is certainly an advantage. But the process is an increasingly divisive one.
Since the first time people realize that AI can create arts, the landscape was soon fraught with potential legal and ethical complications.
Multiple recent lawsuits have been levied against the AI art generators, Stable Diffusion, and others for copyright infringement.
And because the laws aren't ready, there’s not yet a clear legal precedent for how these cases should be handled.
Due to the uncertainty, one of Shutterstock’s main competitors, Getty Images, said that it has no plans in using AI to create photos, or at least not anytime soon. As a matter of fact, the site has even banned AI-generated images on its platform.
"I think that’s dangerous. I don’t think it’s responsible. I think it could be illegal," said Craig Peters, Getty Images CEO.
While it's obvious that DALL·E 2 was trained using datasets, the argument here is that, it must be having "inspiration" from the work of real, living people.
The thing is, it's difficult to pin down exactly when and where AI generators steal from visual artists.
If someone has to be credited for an AI's work, the fact that interpreting artistic style is subjective, is making things even murkier.
Shutterstock however, came prepared. To deal with the concerns about copyright law and artistic ethics, the company said that it uses “datasets licensed from Shutterstock” to train its DALL-E and LG EXAONE-powered AI.
The company also claims it is paying artists whose work is used in its AI-generation, through what it calls the "Contributor Fund."
That fund "will directly compensate Shutterstock contributors if their IP was used in the development of AI-generative models, like the OpenAI model, through licensing of data from Shutterstock’s library,” the company explained in an FAQ section on its website. “Shutterstock will continue to compensate contributors for the future licensing of AI-generated content through the Shutterstock AI content generation tool," the company said.
Shutterstock went on to say that the company is "the first to support a responsible AI-generation model that pays artists for their contributions."
Further, Shutterstock includes a caveat as the guidelines.
"You must not use the generated image to infringe, misappropriate, or violate the intellectual property or other rights of any third party, to generate spam, false, misleading, deceptive, harmful, or violent imagery," the company noted.
Here, Shutterstock is playing it safe. So if any of its AI's generated images include a recognizable bit of trademarked material, it would be wise for users to avoid republishing the problem content.