Getty Images launches commercially AI-generated offering

After banning AI art a year ago, Getty Images is officially getting into the AI image business. The company’s generative AI tool is particularly unique because it’s trained on Getty’s own database of images, and the resulting content also comes with a royalty-free license. That means you won’t have to worry about potential copyright issues down the line.

While Getty, one of the largest suppliers of stock images, editorial photos, videos, and music, has seemingly been on an anti-AI bent — it’s also suing Stable Diffusion maker Stability AI over scraping its data — it’s no surprise the company has figured out a way to get into the market.

Competing photography services have already announced their own AI solutions: Shutterstock is tapping into Open AI’s DALL-E model, while Adobe’s Stock is relying on its own Firefly tool as well as accepting some AI-generated art.

Getty’s Generative AI tool is powered by NVIDIA’s Edify AI model from its Picasso cloud service. It’ll be interesting to see how those results compare against the improved DALL-E 3 model, but for now, it’s basically just a way for Getty to dip a toe into the world of AI.

As part of this new endeavor, Getty is also launching a “contributor compensation model for AI licensing,” Gizmodo reports. Creators will be paid based on the amount of images they’ve uploaded, together with their existing licensing earnings.