Getty Images watermarks its own AI generator

The Future. After suing other AI companies for scraping its images, Getty Images has created its own generative AI tool. The system allegedly pays artists their fair share and protects users from copyright infringement. With Getty working on a feature that would allow artists to upload their works and create generations in their specific styles, the new movement in the stock photo industry may be artists mass-producing oeuvres through the power of the prompt. 

Gettyfied
Generative AI by Getty Images is bringing the classic watermark to AI.

• Developed in partnership with Nvidia, the tool is trained only on Getty’s immense library of licensed photos and illustrations.
• So, members who use it (an additional cost on top of a typical subscription) have “full copyright indemnification” when they use the AI-generated works and have “perpetual, worldwide, and unlimited rights” to them.
• That’s because Getty pays photographers and illustrators when they use their work to train its system and pays them royalties for their use — “a pro-rata share in respect of every file and a share based on traditional licensing revenue.”
• The generated images won’t be added to the Getty Images or iStock content libraries, though.

Unlike other image-generating AI tools, Getty has barred its system from crafting images of “any real-world person.” Want to generate an image of Andy Warhol dancing in an art studio? Sorry, Getty doesn’t know him like that.

Clearly, the company doesn’t want to be at the center of a “Fashion Pope” controversy.