The rise of generative AI means that huge archives of photographs and videos are suddenly valuable with the current situation being compared to a gold rush, but which platforms are licensing their content to large tech firms for the purposes of training AI models?
Disturbing, sexually suggestive AI images of children were available to purchase on the Shutterstock photo website, PetaPixel has exclusively learned.
Shutterstock has teamed up with the United Nation's AI for Good initiative to launch an artificial intelligence image contest.
Shutterstock has announced a new AI-powered feature that allows its customers to make photo edits to an image in its library.
A stock photographer has revealed the results of his experiment that saw him upload 100 images to free stock photo websites.
Shutterstock's Contributor Fund aims to give back to photographers and artists whose work has been used to train generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools -- such as the AI image generator the company is currently promoting.
Shutterstock says customers using its artificial intelligence (AI) image generators will be offered full indemnification, protecting them from potential claims against the use of the images.
Shutterstock is paying online influencers and photographers who generate images with artificial intelligence (AI) to promote its image generator.
Shutterstock is set to acquire animated GIF platform Giphy from Facebook and Instagram owner Meta for $53 million in cash, a divestment that the social media company is making in order to comply with United Kingdom regulators.
Shutterstock has launched an AI image generator on its platform utilizing DALL-E's technology.
Meta and Shutterstock will expand their business partnership, allowing the social media company to train its artificial intelligence and machine learning systems on Shutterstock's collection of millions of images.
Shutterstock has announced a collaboration with the makers of DALL-E that will allow users to generate synthetic images on its platform.
In May, Shutterstock acquired the world's largest video-centric stock agency Pond5 for $210 million. While greatly bolstering its own library, the acquisition also gave it the benefit of taking that footage away from rival Adobe Stock.
Shutterstock has today announced the acquisition of Splash News, with 27 million videos and images being added to the photo library's archive.
Shutterstock has announced that it has acquired the world's largest video-centric stock agency Pond5 for $210 million.
Shutterstock has announced the acquisition of PicMonkey, an online photo editing and design platform, for $110 million.
You don’t need to have a portfolio of hundreds of thousands of images to rank on the first page of the most visited customer queries. In fact, we found that 83% of Shutterstock contributors that rank on the first page of top-500 customer queries have less than 10,000 images in their portfolio.
Every Sunday, we bring together a collection of easy-reading articles from analytical to how-to to photo-features in no particular order that did not make our regular daily coverage. Enjoy!
It looks like computer-generated digital humans are rapidly exiting the uncanny valley. Just take a look at Unreal Engine's impressive new MetaHuman Creator, which lets you create photorealistic "fake" people in just minutes.
Shutterstock is set to acquire 3D-render stock agency TurboSquid for $75 million dollars, investing in a future where photos aren't necessarily captured with a camera. TurboSquid's value appears to have soared amid the COVID-19 outbreak, as traditional photography was hampered by stay-at-home orders.
Shutterstock Editorial has just revealed the photographs that documented the historical moments that dominated 2020, a very different year from any other. The year started normally with red-carpet shows like Oscars and then veered off dramatically to pandemic and protests and is winding up with hope as news of vaccines emerges.
A new "Stock Coalition" made up of photographers, illustrators, animators, and filmmakers from around the world is calling for a "global shutdown of Shutterstock portfolios" to protest the recent change to the stock giant's royalty structure. The industry body is asking contributors to disable their accounts for "at least one week" starting today.
For those who are anywhere near the microstock photography industry, you may have noticed that there is a lot of shouting going on at the moment about the latest release from Shutterstock.
Yesterday, Shutterstock unveiled a new "earnings structure" (i.e. royalty system) on the company forum, and to say photographers are upset would be an understatement. Contributors are furious, going so far as to start a Change.org petition demanding that the change not go through.
Stock photo giant Shutterstock has found itself in some ethical hot water. In a recording obtained by the media, an executive is heard dismissing employees' concerns about the censorship of search results in China, telling them that they are free "to pursue other opportunities" if they're unhappy with the company's decision.
16 years after founding the New York-based stock photo giant Shutterstock, CEO Jon Oringer has announced that he will be stepping down in April. Oringer announced the news in an open letter published this morning, just as Shutterstock unveiled a so-so financial report for Q4 of 2019.
After Lady Gaga's new song "Stupid Love" leaked onto the Internet and went viral last weekend, the singer called out fans who had listened to the unauthorized release. Problem was, Lady Gaga's Tweet used "pirated" stock photos that had "Shutterstock" watermarks splashed across them, and this unauthorized usage didn't escape the company's notice.
Shutterstock has rolled out a new background removal tool to its Shutterstock Editor online image editor, allowing users to quickly and easily extract subjects from their backgrounds in any photo.
While looking at my own images on Shutterstock, I noticed the Shutterstock algorithm was suggesting my photos as “similar” images. I thought it was a bug on the Shutterstock website until I noticed that others had downloaded my photos from other sites then uploaded them to Shutterstock. Shutterstock’s similar photos algorithm then noticed this and suggested the stolen photos along with my photos.
I should start off by saying that I am not a big contributor to stock photography agencies. I did take the plunge into agencies like Shutterstock and Getty Images when I was moving into digital 10 or so years ago, but I found my niche elsewhere.
Fyre Festival was a "luxury music festival" that failed spectacularly back in 2017 after attracting a huge amount of interest with a viral photo and video marketing blitz. Shutterstock has released this 30-second video to show how the wildly expensive Fyre Festival promo video could have been created at a tiny fraction of the cost.
Heads up: if you sell your photos as microstock, companies can use your work in big ways for a very, very small payment. A photographer just found that out the hard way after he found one of his photos featured on a number of products in Walmart.
This line of hand mixers was spotted in Poland in a Biedronka store (the largest discount supermarket chain). Instead of properly using licensed Shutterstock stock photos that come without watermarks, the graphic designers used watermark versions. And apparently, no one noticed (or cared).
Here's a 6-minute educational video by Shutterstock in which filmmaker Todd Blankenship discusses the basics of diffusing light and introduces three cheap options for doing so... including a $5 shower curtain.
Shutterstock has banned all unnatural photos of apes and monkeys. The move by the world's largest subscription-based stock-photo agency comes in response to an appeal by the animal rights organization PETA.
The stock photo service Shutterstock has announced a new powerful photo search tool called Composition Aware Search. It uses advanced deep learning technology to let you search for photos containing certain objects in certain locations.
Google recently published a paper showing how easy it is for a computer to detect an identical watermark from a large collection of photos and then cleanly remove that watermark from each photo. Shutterstock has responded to Google's AI by developing a new randomized watermark that counters it.
Up until just recently I always scoffed at selling my work as stock photography. Let's call it youthful arrogance. I always felt my work was worth more and should be used for more important purposes. The problem was I wasn't good at selling my work independently either.
In a feat of creative "appropriation" on-par with the whole Instagram/Snapchat Stories release, Shutterstock is stepping all over Adobe Stock's toes by releasing a powerful Photoshop plugin that does the exact same thing.
What are the most common cameras used by stock photographers? While we don't have the data across all stock services, Shutterstock has provided us with some numbers that may be somewhat representative for the industry.