Ingrid Lunden, reporting for TechCrunch:
Customers of Shutterstock’s Creative Flow online design platform will now be able to create images based on text prompts, powered by OpenAI and Dall-E 2… Shutterstock says the images are “ready for licensing” right after they’re made.
As far as I can tell, you are already free to use images created with Dall-E 2 commercially so I am not entirely sure how the Stutterstock partnership changes things. It does, however present a stark contrast when compared to Getty Images’ response to generative AI. The article continues:
One of Shutterstock’s big competitors, Getty Images, is currently embroiled in a lawsuit against Stability AI — maker of another generative AI service called Stable Diffusion — over using its images to train its AI without permission from Getty or rightsholders.
In other words, Shutterstock’s service is not only embracing the ability to use AI… but it’s setting the company up in opposition to Getty in terms of how it is embracing the brave new world of artificial intelligence.
My knee-jerk reaction is to say that Getty is behind the times here but, after thinking about this a little bit more, I am less sure about that.
If Shutterstock starts re-licensing AI generated images, why would you pay for them instead paying of OpenAI or Midjourney directly? More to the point, why not use Stable Diffusion to generate images, for free, on your own computer?
Getty Images, on the other hand, gets to be the anti-AI company selling certified human-made images. I can see that being a valuable niche for some time to come.