Getty Images Explores Merger With Shutterstock (reuters.com) 14
According to Bloomberg (paywalled), Getty Images is exploring a merger with its rival Shutterstock. Following the news, Getty's shares were up 20.3% in afternoon trading, while shares of Shutterstock were up 7.7%. Reuters reports: The development comes at a time when Getty Images has struggled to retain customers and replace the lost customers. Its creative and editorial products, two of its largest revenue segments, declined year-over-year in 2023, according to its annual report. The decline in the popularity of stock image websites has coincided with the rise of AI tools like Midjourney and DALL-E 2, which can generate unique images quickly and cheaply. Seattle, Washington-based Getty is considering how to structure a deal that would unite two of the biggest U.S. providers of licensed visual content, the report said. [...] Deliberations are ongoing and Getty could choose not to pursue a deal, the report added.
A merger makes sense (Score:4, Informative)
Getty has 400 million images.
Shutterstock has 600 million.
I've used Shutterstock for several projects. The search engine is pretty good. I can usually find what I need.
Most artists list their images on both sites, so there's a lot of overlap.
A merger would allow the combined company to charge customers more while squeezing the artists, thus creating shareholder value.
The future competition is with gen-AI.
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The future competition is with gen-AI.
Getty is in the gen-AI business already https://slashdot.org/story/23/... [slashdot.org] and they can do this while suing others https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org] They're in a good position, they own many well-labelled images they can use for their tools, and can routinely test thousand of prompts in StableDiffusion / Midjourney / etc. until they can accumulate evidence someone must have scrapped them then sue for billions.
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Yes, at some point it'll be trivial to create imagery on the fly with some voice input, rather than spending the time to search for an image and then spending more time looking through pages of hit-or-miss images trying to find just the right one.
I think it's a given that AI is here to stay in image and video generation, and it's going to be built into everything we have and use and consume whether we want it or not.
All your photos are belong to us (Score:3)
That's a massive bank of imagery, about ~1B images. It would be interesting to see what percentage of the pictures are of cats.
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Shutterstock: 4.7 million, Getty: 0.6 million.
Ahh, my bad for misreading.
Stockphotography is dead (Score:2)
In our last flyer 100% of the images where AI generated. Generating what you need is also a lot faster than searching what photo might fit more or less. Sorry, stockphotography is dead.
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"Sorry, stockphotography is dead."
And with it, studios, lighting, cameras, photographers, models, makeup.....
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Brave New World
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"Sorry, stockphotography is dead."
And with it, studios, lighting, cameras, photographers, models, makeup.....
Depends on what is the work. Stock photography may be but the valuable work will be professional product shots, scenes, etc. that require talent to do well
Unsplash (Score:2)
I would rather one just fail. (Score:2)
Companies that fail should just be shuttered, debts paid, all customer data destroyed, and the remains auctioned.