"Getty and Nvidia Introduce Generative AI to Stock Photography"

Getty Images and Nvidia are deepening their AI partnership with the launch of Generative AI, a text-to-image platform specifically designed for creating stock photos, provided by iStock.

iStock's Generative AI builds on Getty's first foray into AI image generation with Getty Images' Generative AI. The difference is that iStock's image platform (a stock photo service under Getty) caters to individuals or single users, unlike Getty Images, which primarily targets multi-user enterprise solutions.

By using Nvidia's Picasso model for training, iStock's Generative AI learns exclusively from Getty's creative image library and iStock's stock photo library. It does not train on Getty's editorial image library to prevent it from generating trademarks or recognizable individuals.

Grant Farhall, Chief Product Officer at Getty, said that iStock's Generative AI is aimed at small and medium-sized businesses in need of stock photos.

"It allows users to be more efficient in their workflow and get more precise photos that they may not be able to capture with a camera," said Farhall. He gave an example of someone looking for a photo depicting climate change: they can prompt iStock's Generative AI to create an image of a penguin walking through city streets, instead of hiring a photographer and finding a group of penguins, the AI can create it for them.

Pricing starts at $14.99 for 100 prompts, with four images generated per prompt.

Another major difference between Getty Images' AI platform and the new iStock service involves legal guarantees. Unlike Getty Images' Generative AI, users will not have unlimited indemnification. iStock's platform will set a $10,000 compensation limit per asset, which is the same as the licenses currently offered in its image library. Contributors who provide content for training the model can participate in revenue sharing, similar to Getty's first Generative AI platform.

iStock's platform will also soon add Inpainting and Outpainting features, according to Alexander Lazarou, a spokesperson for Getty. Inpainting allows users to mask a specific area of an image and then fill it with text prompts to add people or objects. Outpainting can expand the aspect ratio of a photo and fill in these new areas.

Inpainting and Outpainting will be launched "soon" and will not be available at the time of launch.