Getty Images Exploring Merger with Rival Shutterstock in Wake of AI Boom

Two images merging

Getty Images, the royalty-free image site, is rumoured to be exploring a merger with rival Shutterstock.

The move, first reported by Bloomberg, is said to be in response to the rise of artificial intelligence image generator tools like Adobe Firefly, MidJourney and DALL-E, which are increasingly being utilised by creatives for inexpensive visual content. 

Merger rumours have boosted the stock price of both brands (Shutterstock’s by 22.7% and Getty’s by 39.7%), which are known for providing stock imagery, videos, and music to users including advertisers, the media, and marketing and design professionals. However, over the past year, both companies have struggled to retain customers due to the impact of generative AI tools, which typical users are increasingly turning to.

The Beginning Of The End For Stock Images?

If successful, the partnership would bring together two of the world’s biggest providers of licensed visual content. However, some spectators have highlighted potential antitrust issues in the wake of joint control and dwindling competition in the space.

News of the potential partnership comes shortly after ad giant Omnicom announced its acquisition of Interpublic Group to become the largest global advertising firm. Since, there has been an ongoing dialogue about the perceived risk of companies monopolising creative industries.

However, image libraries may be obsolete sooner than we think, and despite Getty and Shutterstock both creating their own internal AI image generation tools, the rumoured merger may be a sign that these industry big players are attempting to find their footing amid AI threat. 

“AI has turned the visual content world upside down,” says Doug Main, creative director at integrated marketing agency The Bigger Boat, “and this rumoured Getty-Shutterstock merger feels like a reaction to that shift.”

The visual content space has experienced unprecedented change because of artificial intelligence, and thanks to the creation of image generation tools, the possibility of stock-image services becoming redundant in the future is real.

One of the things that makes AI image creation so threatening to the industry is that its content is highly customisable to a user’s demands. So you need an image of a labrador, on a beach, playing poker for your next campaign? While image libraries are limited to pre-existing photos or illustrations, AI generators can produce tailored and surreal images after only a few prompts and at a fraction of the cost. This is what’s appealing to many advertisers and marketers.

“Why pay for stock images when you can create your own with tools like MidJourney for a fraction of the cost?” Main continues, “The fact that AI-generated content is popping up on stock sites too just shows how much the game has changed. But not everyone’s ready to jump on the AI train – some of our clients like the BBC still prefer to avoid it. This merger could be less about staying ahead and more about finding their place in an industry that might not even need them in the same way anymore.”

Despite this, many brands continue to reject the use of AI image generators for multiple reasons – including feeling these images have an unnatural look, or that these visuals lack depth given from illustrators, designers, or photographers.

For many brands, striking the right balance between authenticity, speed, and risk – particularly in the face of AI – plays an important role. This is echoed by Matt Burt, Director of Business Affairs at VaynerMedia EMEA: “Whilst the use of AI technology within the visual content space is nascent, there’s an ongoing exercise to find the right balance between speed, quality, risk (as it relates to copyright, for example) and the role humans play in the visual content creative and production process. The proposed merger with Getty and Shutterstock is likely to be influenced by how they, as a joint solution, can help their customers find this.”

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