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Tag: Getty Images

  • Getty Images merges with Shutterstock amid stiff competition in AI-driven visual content

    Getty Images merges with Shutterstock amid stiff competition in AI-driven visual content

    On Tuesday, two of the biggest image agencies in the world, Shutterstock and Getty Images, announced their intention to merge, creating a massive force in the visual content industry.

    The companies said in a joint statement that they want to combine their massive image platforms and save $150 million to $200 million over the three years following the merger. Getty Image Holdings, the new company’s name, will be valued at around $3.7 billion, the news statement stated.

    “With the rapid rise in demand for compelling visual content across industries, there has never been a better time for our two businesses to come together,” said Getty Images chief executive Craig Peters.

    “By combining our complementary strengths, we can better address customer opportunities while delivering exceptional value to our partners, contributors, and stockholders,” he added.

    Read also: Getty Images Bans AI-generated Content

    The merged companies will remain listed on the New York Stock Exchange as Getty Images Holdings.

    Aims of the merger 

    The merger aims to boost investment in customer-facing technology, such as generative AI, 3D photography, and search capabilities, as well as in the production of original content and more extensive event coverage.

    The merger will only be finalised with regulatory clearances, shareholder approval from both companies and the extension or refinance of Getty’s existing debt obligations.

    Despite the market’s positive reaction to the merger news, both firms’ shares have experienced steep declines in the last year, with Shutterstock down 22 percent and Getty down 36 percent.

    Paul Hennessy, the CEO of Shutterstock, said he was thrilled about the company’s plans to merge with Getty Images to improve its product offerings and grow its content collection. He emphasised the anticipated advantages for each company’s shareholders and customers, such as cost synergies, product innovation, and growth prospects.

    “We are excited about the opportunities to expand our creative content library and enhance our product offering to meet diverse customer needs,” he noted.

    “We expect the merger to create value for the customers and stockholders of both companies by capitalising on growth opportunities, driving combined revenues, accelerating product innovation, realising significant cost synergies, and improving cash flow. We look forward to collaborating closely with the Getty Images management team to complete the transaction and drive the next phase of growth,” he added.

    Read also: HUGO BOSS And Adobe Partner To Drive 3D Innovation In Fashion

    Details of the agreement 

    As part of the agreement, Shutterstock stockholders will get 319.4 million shares of Getty Images in addition to $331 million in cash.

    Approximately 54.7 percent of the new company will be owned by Getty Images shareholders after the acquisition closes, and 45.3 percent will be owned by Shutterstock shareholders.

    Getty Images CEO Craig Peters, six Getty Images-designated directors, and four Shutterstock-designated directors, plus Paul Hennessy, the CEO of Shutterstock, will make up the combined company’s eleven-member board of directors.

    Mark Getty, the current chairman of Getty Images, which he co-founded in 1995, will have the role of chairman and Craig Peters will serve as CEO of the merged firm.

    Before being private once more in 2008, Getty Images, a significant global supplier of stock photos, was first listed on the stock exchange in 1996.

    The Getty family took over the company’s 51 per cent ownership from the private equity firm Carlyle in 2018, taking over a group burdened by the significant debt that the previous owners had accrued.

    At the end of 2021, the agency made a comeback to the stock market in a transaction valued at approximately $4.8 billion.

    The activist investment firm Trillium Capital made an unsuccessful deal to purchase the business in April 2023 for about $4 billion.

  • Getty Images Bans AI-generated Content

    Getty Images Bans AI-generated Content

    Getty Images has banned the submission and sale of artwork created using Al-generated image synthesis models such as Stable Diffusion, DALL-E 2, and Midjourney on its platform.

    The user-generated platform follows sites including Newgrounds, PurplePort, and FurAffinity in the decision to ban Alternative Intelligence-generated illustrations. This makes Getty Images, the largest visual media company put such a ban in place.

    The CEO of Getty Images Holdings Inc, Craig Peters states that the company has real concerns concerning the copyright of Al-generated content, as well as unaddressed rights issues concerning the imagery, the image metadata, and those individuals contained within the imagery.

    He said given these concerns, selling AI-generated artwork or illustrations could potentially put Getty Images users at legal risk. And insists that the platform is simply looking out for its customers and that AI-generated images might not be in their best interest.

    Getty states that this ban does not prevent the submission of 3D renders nor does it prevent the use of any digital editing tool, such as Photoshop or Illustrator.

    Read also: Meta Company Accuses Facebook of Alleged Trademark Infringement

    Why is Getty Images doing this?

    It is worth stating that photographs are strongly protected under the law. The original elements are everything from the angle, lighting, focus, composition, exposure, and so on of the subject. A copyrighted photo of a Laundromat doesn’t restrict anyone else from photographing Laundromats generally or that particular Laundromat; only from reproducing that same set of factors chosen by the original photographer.

    This explains why you can take a picture of a famous landscape from the same spot as a famous photographer, and the picture is yours, but copying a print of the original photograph and trying to sell it can get you in trouble.

    The reality of it is that copyright is complicated, and by design, questions of fair use are handled on a per-case basis. There’s a four-point balancing test applied every time, and there’s no streamlined way of weighing one as more important than the other.

    1) The purpose and character of your use
    2) The nature of the copyrighted work
    3) The amount and substantiality of the portion taken
    4) The effect of the use upon the potential market.

    There’s, as yet, no clear-cut answer to whether AI-generated art does violate artist copyright protections.

    What users should know

    The creators of AI-generated images say the technology is legal, but the jury is still out on this. Software like Stable Diffusion is trained on copyrighted images scraped from the web, including personal art blogs, news sites, and stock photo sites like Getty Images. The act of scraping is legal in the US, and it seems the output of the software is covered by the “fair use” doctrine. But fair use provides weaker protection to commercial activities like selling pictures, and some artists whose work has been scraped and imitated by companies making AI image generators have called for new laws to regulate this domain.

    When asked if AI-generated content was a threat to the livelihoods of illustrators and photographers who sell their work on Getty Images, the CEO of Getty Images Holdings Inc., Craig Peters, suggested that these tools were just the latest example of technology expanding the amount of available imagery.

    “The world is already awash in imagery. Digital cameras have generated exponential growth in imagery given the reduced cost and simplicity of capture, transmission, and use. The introduction of the smartphone and social media took this to all new levels, with trillions of images taken and posted,” said Peters. “Our business has never been about the ease of creating imagery or the resulting volume. It is about connecting and cutting through. ”

    Peters says Getty Images will rely on users to identify and report such images, and that it’s working with C2PA (the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity) to create filters. However, no automated filter will be wholly reliable, and it’s not clear how easy Getty Images will find it to enforce its new ban.

    The platforms that sell artistic images, like Getty, are inherently threatened by AI-generated art. The reason is that there could be less demand long-term for artistic works if people can easily use computers to create fake ones to get across certain scenes or ideas.
    Another fear AI-generated content creates, apart from copyright issues, is that artificial intelligence can be used to create images of real people in compromising situations that never happened, and this could lead to defamation lawsuits or worse.

    About Getty Images

    Getty Images Holdings, Inc. is an American visual media company and is a supplier of stock images, editorial photography, video, and music for businesses and consumers, with a library of over 477 million assets. It targets three markets—creative professionals, the media, and corporate.