With generative artificial intelligence, a phrase can form extraordinary or hyper-realistic images. Just describe what you want to create, be it a wooden house with a cotton roof or a stylish office full of busy executives. Then the tool, previously trained on large databases, takes the clues and generates never-before-seen images. This powerful resource, which is in the hands of some companies such as OpenAI or Midjourney, is gaining more and more importance in the market. Getty Images, a global visual content creation giant, today announced its new generative artificial intelligence (AI) tool that can create images or illustrations from a text command. The company argues it is the first commercially safe in the category: it trains only with its own image library and with compensation for commercial use.
Getty ensures that the creators of the images included in the algorithm, such as designers or photographers, receive financial compensation for their contribution to the training data sets. However, the exact amount or percentage of this benefit has not yet been determined. Craig Peters, CEO of the company, explains EL PAÍS via video conference: “It will be a portion of every dollar of revenue we generate from the service. We don’t pay them a flat fee. It is a continuous stream of income for these contributors based on the content they have provided to us.”
The tool marks a change in position for the company regarding generative AI. Earlier this year, Getty filed lawsuits in the US and UK against Stability IA, the company behind image generator Stable Diffusion, saying it used millions of its photos to train its algorithm without permission. Additionally, Getty is prohibited from uploading and selling images created using third-party artificial intelligence art tools on its platform. And according to the CEO, nothing will change in this position and it will not be possible to add images generated with its own tool to existing libraries.
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Peters explains that editorial content, such as photos related to news, sports, entertainment, celebrities or brands, will not be included in the new tool’s algorithm and therefore it will not be possible to generate new images from it. “It’s just our creative content,” he clarifies via video conference.
Getty, whose image database is used by media companies, advertising agencies and other companies, is not the first in the industry to use generative AI. In October 2022, Shutterstock added a similar tool to its service, drawing much criticism from artists whose work was copied from the internet without their consent to the algorithms being trained.
Getty Images artificial intelligence toolGetty Agency
The new tool will be offered as a standalone service within the Getty platform. This means that both existing and new customers must subscribe to it. The price varies depending on the customer’s characteristics and is similar to your company’s current operations. By creating and downloading the Man-made Images, users are granted a standard royalty-free license, which includes representations and warranties, unlimited indemnity and the right to use them in perpetuity, worldwide and non-exclusive.
The company guarantees that later this year customers will be able to customize the tool with their own data to create images with exclusive style and language. For example, a manufacturer can generate new visual content based on their own product or brand. However, this feature doesn’t work for photos of people. Currently, the tool is only available in English and the inclusion of Spanish and other languages will reportedly occur in successive phases.
From design to photography, the avalanche of artificial content has struck fear among artists and creatives. Eva Casado, president of the Association of Professional Photographers of Spain (AFPE), explains that the industry is in a “war situation” against these generative AI models, especially because many of them violate copyright. “You can even order a photo in the style of a specific photographer. “It’s a form of plagiarism,” he says. There is also a dispute in the labor market. “We are affected because there are many jobs that are currently not being done by photographers. AI does it because you pay an additional monthly fee and create anything you want,” adds the president of AFPE.
For her part, Yolanda Purriños, director of the College of Photography of the Spanish Association of Image Professionals, emphasizes that those who dedicate themselves to photography of landscapes and nature or advertising “have it very complicated” because AI produces such impressive images. that they are impossible to overcome.” “A large majority of authors defend that they are not ‘photographs’ but ‘images’ since they were not created with a camera and cannot be sold as such,” says he.
Due to the constant development of photographic equipment and also the impact of artificial intelligence, Purriños emphasizes that since the digitalization of photography there has been a constant pressure to always stay up to date. And now many professionals have returned to the past to regain authenticity. “Demand for the film has increased over the last year [fotográfica]because it is the only thing that maintains the magic and continues to give truth to this captured moment,” he concludes.
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