Shutterstock 'Evolves' Into 'Human-Led, AI-Powered Creative Platform'

Slashdot reader BrianFagioli writes: Shutterstock has unveiled what it calls a "human-led, AI-powered" creative platform that combines its massive library of [human] contributor-created content with AI image and video generation, AI editing, conversational search, prompt enhancement, and automated model selection tools. The company says the goal is to help creators move from idea to finished work faster [in a single application] while maintaining commercial licensing protections and contributor royalty payments... While Shutterstock repeatedly emphasizes human creativity, much of the platform's future appears centered on AI-generated and AI-modified content.
An article at Nerds.xyz suggests Shutterstock's AI tools let users "transform existing content into something new," while noting Shutterstock's repeated references to human creativity "almost feel defensive."

But it points out other companies including Adobe and Canva "and countless startups are all racing to integrate AI into creative workflows."

Not sure what they are planning

[gurps_npc]

I could see some kind of thing where they are paying people to contribute, this could work. Perhaps every AI job specifies the contributed work that most affected it and pays that person half the amount Shutterstock charges the customers.

But if they are not paying the human contributors, they are going to fail.

Re:

[jhoegl]

costs more to buy the original than the print.

Yet we treat originals like low cost prints.

Artists need to treat their works like originals, sell them for higher value, because once the internet owns it, it becomes a print.

Re:

[sg_oneill]

Eh. Despite initial fears in 1990s about reproduction on the internet devaluing originals, copyright law and enforcement largely settled on the idea that that people posting images etc on forums and social media was largely harmless particularly if credit was given, but people using them commercially required payment. and that was an arangement that largely suited artists fine and largely ran as much on principle as legality until the AI bro's turned up and started just stealing art to transform into slop u

Also known aw a "slop fest"...

[gweihir]

I don't think they are making themselves any friends here.

Re:

[alvinrod]

Did they have any to begin with? I don't think this will help them at all, but their alternative is to drown anyway. For reference, their stock is down 85% over a 5 year period. Maybe this will keep them afloat for a while longer (or more likely make them a more attractive buyout target) or it's just a last gasp for air on the way out (which is where they're less attractive buyout target, but eventually become cheap enough for someone to scoop up).

Re:

[allo]

They don't want to make friends, they want to make money. So they need to offer something that's in demand.

"human-washing"

[BeaverCleaver]

Human-washing is the new green washing. Release a bunch of PR platitudes about how important humans are, while stealing and reselling all their work.

It's just like fossil fuel companies pretending to be "green" because they slap their logo on some reusable coffee cups, or use solar power to light up a sign at their refinery. Or McDonalds pretending they don't generate piles of garbage because they print the "recycling arrow" logo on their packaging

Shutterstock evolves into Shutterborg

[Mirnotoriety]

Of course everything people creates goes back to the mothership. As the core AI cannot create original material. “The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own.”

I guess artists are upset

[NotEmmanuelGoldstein]

Like Adobe AI, Shutterstock wants to sell stolen art to the very artists they robbed. Artists would stop buying Adobe products but Software As A Subscription means Adobe can also re-possess their digital tools. AFAIK, Shutterstock doesn't have that vendor lock-in.

Re:

[allo]

Other than many models, these companies have a lot of licensed content. So not even the stealing argument makes sense. And don't go "I did not know that the 'We reserve the right to use your images in other ways' clause can actually be used!" Just because you didn't read the fine print or didn't care for it, it doesn't mean that it does not apply to you.

Could be competing with their photographers

[mattr]

I used to work for a stock photo library. My 5 second research on shutterstock says they provide royalty-free and perpetual licenses which is pretty different from the kind of high end agency that represents photographers. This one seems to aim at the low end and if they are offering AI-generated photos (tldr) it is in direct competition with a photographer they represent, unless they are actually selling a license to his/her photo along with offering some AI manipulations of it like maybe cutting an athlet

Oh yeah, Shutterstock...

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

one of those companies whose sole purpose seems to be annoying you by slapping their name as a watermark on a generic image you'd like to use in a meme, and force to spend 10 seconds finding somewhere else because you were never going to pay a stupid company to remove their mark on a bad picture you can find everywhere.

I wonder how those companies still exist, let alone make any money.

Anyway, the modern way to use copyrighted photos for free is to ask stable diffusion to regenerate it, because the AI compan

What else should they do?

[allo]

Making money with stock images is more or less dead. If someone needs a stupid image for their news article, why should they use the overused symbol image from shutterstock instead of generating a novel image for each article? Depending on the motivation it can match the article exactly or just be something readers didn't see a thousand times before, but it is cheap and novel. Shutterstock can either become as popular as myspace today or go AI.

Re: What else should they do?

[Anamon]

Probably because an increasing number of people react allergically to the kind of pictures LLMs generate. The moment I get a whiff of GenAI imagery on any website, that is very likely the last that website will ever see of me. I have a feeling the implicit statement of "I couldn't be arsed to pay someone to illustrate this, or even just look for a real picture, but please, waste your time reading my slop" might not be a great long-term recipe.

But you have a point, LLM images are inherently worthless because

Re:

[allo]

An AI image is often rather better than worse than the stock image you've seen a thousand times and it still doesn't really make sense for that news. You're surely right that one could omit the image, but if some site means they need an image so they have a better listing in Google news, the use of AI for it does not affect the quality of the news themselves. One could even think that saving on stock image fees could (slightly) increase the budget for writing good news.

I think you have two uses of AI images

My guess is

[nospam007]

...that they are losing money already because people create their own AI stock-photos instead of buying them from ANYBODY.

If I need a photo of an elephant playing the flute, I don't care how it was created.

Shutterstock...

[jimbo2150]

Refuses to accept most people cell phone photos even if they're good... allows anyone to make AI slop. Makes perfect sense.

Slopstock

[CEC-P]

"We haven't figured out how to get an AI to run the AIs yet" - Slopstock, probably.