Getty Images has launched a second AI generator as part of its stock image services. This new feature will be a part of iStock and will let users create their own stock photos using text prompts.

Titled Generative AI by iStock, the AI generator will be powered by Nvidia. It builds on Getty’s first generative AI text-to-image feature, which was launched earlier in 2023.

Two generators

But why does Getty need two image generators? The main difference between them is the target audience. Generative AI by iStock is targeted at individual users and small businesses rather than larger companies and collaborative teams.

“It allows users to be more efficient in their workflow and get more precise photos that they need, even something that they can’t feasibly do with a camera,” Grant Farhall, Getty’s chief product officer, told The Verge.

However, one other major difference exists between this new image generator and Getty’s other one: users of Generative AI by iStock will not have unlimited indemnification. There is a cap of $10,000 per image, the same as photos licenced on the platform. This means that there is a limit to what will be covered should any legal issues come up.

Copyright

According to Getty, the data set was trained on images from their creative library and iStock’s stock photo library. In other words, it was only trained on images that they hold the copyright for.

This has been a major pain point with other text-to-image generators, with lawsuits filed against Stable Diffusion for copyright infringement. Ironically, Getty was one of the first ones to initiate such a lawsuit.

At this stage, it seems as though Getty is going ‘all in’ with text-to-image generators, which makes sense. I predict that stock images will see the largest impact from AI-generated images. It simply makes good business sense for the stock image sites to be on the front end of the technology.

As the saying goes: if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

[via the verge]