Shutterstock is completely leaning into AI-generated stock photos and wants to throw a bone at the meager sacks of meat that made this possible.
In the coming months, the stock image giant announces that it will expand its relationship with OpenAI to provide its users with “direct access” to the hugely popular IA model SLAB-2 text-image. In effect, this means the two companies will work together to sell AI-generated artwork., in part from man-made Shutterstock images. Go ahead and insert your Ouroboros meme here.
For consumers, Shutterstock believes this categorical adoption of AI-generated stock images will open up new creative opportunities and improve their clients’ workflow. At the same time, one of the main competitors of the site has already denounced the idea and warned selling AI-generated images is premature, if not illegal.
As part of its new agreement, Shutterstock will also ban AI-generated artwork that is not produced through the OpenAI platform. This is bad news for Stable Diffusion, Deep AI, Dream Studio, NightCafe and a number of others competing AI art generators the low.
pay humans
Shutterstock is trying to solve a lingering problem that bedevils the entire AI art market: how to compensate human artists whose work has helped power DALL-E?
The company’s response, according to a press release, is to launch an initial “contribution fund” to compensate contributors whoto Shutterstock images were used to help develop the technology. If successful, Shutterstock’s model could set the standard for human artist compensation in an AI art space that, until now, has largely been a Wild West of legal ambiguity and financial. In addition to the fund, Shutterstock said it aims to compensate contributors with royalties when DALL-E uses their work in its AI art.
“The means of expressing creativity are constantly evolving and expanding,” Shutterstock CEO Paul Hennessy said in a statement. “We recognize that it is our great responsibility to embrace this evolution and ensure that the generative technology that drives innovation is grounded in ethical practices.”
In the nearly two years since its launch in January 2021, DALL-E has grown to become arguably the biggest and most reputable tool in the AI art space. Since last year, as part of its partnership with OpenAI Shutterstock, its sold images and metadata to OpenAI to help strengthen and train DALL-E. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman attributed much of that success to the company’s deals with Shutterstock.
“The data we licensed from Shutterstock was critical to the formation of DALL-E,” Altman said in a statement. “We are delighted that Shutterstock is offering DALL-E images to its customers as part of one of the first deployments through our API, and we look forward to future collaborations as artificial intelligence becomes an integral part of workflows. creative work of artists.”
The deep integration follows months of concerned whispers online on whether or not AI art generators would lead to the death of stock image sites. In response, Shutterstock seems to take the, “if you can’t beat theemjoinem” approach.
Still, not everyone is so optimistic about selling AI-generated stock images. In a interview With The Verge this week, Getty Images CEO Craig Peters slammed his competitor for “racing” to market the tools and warned that the implications of such a tidal shift were not fully considered. It should be noted Getty Images banned uploading and selling AI-generated artwork on its platform last month.
“There are a lot of questions right now – about who owns the copyright in this material, what rights were exploited to create this material – and we don’t want to expose our clients to that legal risk,” he said. said Peters in a interview with The Verge.
Beyond the ethical questions surrounding how to properly compensate people who continue to create AI art, there’s a bunch of potentially never-more delicate copyright issues inherent in the technology that are still being worked out. Peters’ approach for Getty Images, at least for now, is to wait for things to happen.
“I think we’re watching some organizations, individuals and companies being reckless,” Peters added, while naming Shutterstock in the process. “I think the fact that these issues are not addressed is the problem here. In some cases they are just thrown by the wayside. I think it’s dangerous. I don’t think it’s responsible. I think it might be illegal.
Shutterstock did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment.
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