Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
It seemed inevitable after Getty images aquired the free image site Unsplash last year that they would eventually start a paid version. Well, it actually happened. Unsplash has announced a paid tier called Unsplash+ which will be a subscription-based format. But don’t worry, the free version will still be available.
Unsplash+ offers paying members access to “curated content” available for commercial licenses with extra legal protection and unlimited downloads.
It looks like the photography world is starting to get a little sick of AI-generated imagery. Or at least, much of it is sick of it being classed as “photography”. Last week, UK-based model and photographer website PurplePort AI-generated images on its website and now it seems that so have Getty Images/iStock and the “free” stock image website Unsplash.
Both platforms have made announcements in the past few hours stating in no uncertain terms that AI-generated images are banned from their platforms. Both companies also stress that this only applies to AI-generated images, and not human-created 3D render submissions or digital editing tools that are designed to enhance or manually create images from scratch (like Photoshop and Illustrator).
Getty Images, one of the biggest stock image platforms, has banned AI-generated images. If you want to upload and sell work you created through DALL-E, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, or any other text-to-image tool, you won’t be able to do it there.
The reason? Potential copyright issues. Getty is concerned about the legality of such content, so they want to protect the site’s customers from unwanted copyright claims.
Stock image powerhouse Getty Images has launched an initiative to elevate black culture and history. The Black History & Culture Collection (BHCC), was created to provide free non-commercial access to historical and cultural images of the African/Black Diaspora in the US and UK from the 19th century to the present day.
The collection aims to grant access to rarely seen images to educators, academics, researchers, and content creators, enabling them to tell untold stories about Black culture.
Getty Images has announced that it will become a publicly-traded company on the US stock market. The company was valued at an enterprise value of $4.8 billion, and it’s going to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “GETY.”
A Canada woman came across a photo of her mother mourning at one of the memorials for Indigenous children in the country. Discovering that the photo is sold and licensed through Getty Images, the woman raised concern and is even thinking of taking legal action.
Unsplash has announced that it’s becoming a part of Getty Images. Although the company is being acquired, it doesn’t mean that it will disappear. It continues to operate under its own name, and despite the controversy, the images on Unsplash will remain free.
Dallas-based digital marketing company CixxFive Concepts has recently filed a class action lawsuit against Getty Images. The lawsuit claims that Getty is allegedly licensing images that are in the public domain. But in addition to that, CixxFive Concepts also accuses Getty of using all kinds of “deceptive techniques” to make customers think that the company is the legal copyright holder.
President Donald Trump’s most recent financial disclosure has revealed an unusual agreement involving Getty Images and Melania Trump. In 2017, the First Lady has reportedly earned at least $100,000 in an agreement with Getty for the use of photos of the Trump family. But there’s a catch: the media are only allowed to use each of the 187 photos in “positive stories.”
Remember that a month ago image sharing platform 500px announced that they will shut their marketplace down? A closer look at the announcement by Redditor Ricky_Lee_Hasselhoff reveals that 500px are also killing their Creative Commons licensing option.
If you are unfamiliar with Creative Commons, you can read about it here, but in a nutshell, it’s a licensing scheme that allows others to use your photos without monetary compensation. Here is the nice thing about creative commons: it allows putting restrictions on usage. Things like an obligation to credit the artist or restricting from commercial use. Basically Creative Commons is a licensing platform that encourages sharing.
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