Shutterstock today unveiled its plan to expand its partnership with OpenAI by providing the startup with training data for its AI models. Shutterstock and OpenAI partner over the next six years, OpenAI will obtain images, videos, music, and associated metadata from Shutterstock, while Shutterstock customers will gain “priority access” to OpenAI’s latest technology and new editing capabilities to transform images in Shutterstock’s stock content library.
OpenAI and Shutterstock have renewed and significantly expanded their strategic partnership. Through Giphy, the GIF library Shutterstock recently acquired from Meta, OpenAI will bring its generative AI capabilities to mobile users.
“This partnership reinforces our commitment to driving AI tech innovation and positions us as the data and distribution partner of choice for industry leaders in generative AI,” said Shutterstock CEO Paul Hennessy in a press release.
Shutterstock and generative AI startups have a tense relationship. Generative AI, especially generative art AI, poses a serious challenge to stock galleries because of its power to instantly generate highly customized stock images.
Generative AI startups have come under fire from contributors to stock image galleries, such as artists and photographers, for what they perceive as an attempt to profit off their work without giving credit or compensation. In response, Getty Images recently filed a lawsuit against Stability AI, the creators of the AI art tool Stable Diffusion, for scraping its content.
Stability AI allegedly unlawfully copied and processed millions of Getty Images submissions protected by copyright to train its software. Consequently, a trio of artists is suing Stability AI and Midjourney, an AI art creation platform, for copyright infringement.
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However, some experts believe that training models using public images, even copyrighted ones, will be justified under the fair use doctrine in the U.S.
It is unlikely that this issue will be resolved soon, so Shutterstock, seemingly not wanting to depend on a prolonged court dispute for profits, has partnered with OpenAI to launch an image creator that is powered by OpenAI’s DALL-E 2.
This partnership between Shutterstock and OpenAI dates back to 2021, and the image creator was launched in late 2022.
OpenAI, alongside Shutterstock, has formed licensing agreements with Nvidia, Meta, LG, and other companies in order to construct generative AI models and tools across 3D models, images, and text.
In addition, to express appreciation for the artists who work on its platform, Shutterstock has created a “contributor fund” that compensates artists for their efforts in training Shutterstock’s generative AI and provides them with ongoing royalties for future licenses of newly-generated assets.
