Back in 2021, the UK government ordered Meta to sell Giphy, and now the buyer has been announced. It’s Shutterstock, the famous stock photo company, which agreed to buy Giphy from Meta for $53 million.
Death of stock photography? Shutterstock launches its own AI image generator
Shortly after welcoming AI-generated images on its platform, Shutterstock has introduced its own AI image generator, Shutterstock.AI. In collaboration with OpenAI, Shutterstock now offers AI-generated stock images to its customers from anywhere. They can create images in seconds, using any of the languages the website offers. Could this be the end of stock photography as we know it?
Shutterstock discontinues Editor, but a new editing app is on the way
If you’ve been using Shutterstock Editor to create visual art and projects – say goodbye to the tool and your files. Shutterstock discontinued its Editor this Halloween (how’s that for scary?), but it has announced a brand new editing app with the same purpose. Still, if you had any saved projects you’ve been modifying for different purposes, you’ll have to create them all over again in Shutterstock’s new app.
AI-generated stock images are coming to Shutterstock
AI-generated images have become a thing, they’re available to everyone, and it looks like they’re here to stay. So, Shutterstock decided to embrace them and add them to its offer. Teaming up with OpenAI, the company is soon integrating the text-to-image model DALL-E 2 straight into its website.
Shutterstock acquires stock video platform Pond5 for $210 million
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After Turbosquid and PicMonkey, stock photo platform Shutterstock has acquired another company. This time, it’s Pond5, one of the major stock video platforms in the world. Shutterstock has disclosed the details of the deal, revealing that they acquired Pond5 for $210 million.
Shutterstock bought photo and design editor PicMonkey for $110 million
Famous stock photo platform Shutterstock has announced the acquisition of PicMonkey, a web-based image editing and design platform. PicMonkey should be able to offer more content to image editors and illustrators, and Shutterstock expects to increase annual revenues after acquiring PicMonkey for $100 million dollars.
Is photography going cameraless? Shutterstock buys CG market Turbosquid for $75,000,000
It’s been said for years that CG is coming to take away jobs from photographers and in some respects, that may be true. We know that companies like Ikea use almost exclusively CG imagery in their catalogues now instead of actual photographs of the products. But this is nothing new. Back in 2014, 75% of their “photography” was CG.
With many photographers around the world unable to work in 2020, though, CG imagery has seen a fairly solid uptick, which would probably go a large way to explaining why stock photography company, Shutterstock has purchased Turbosquid, the world’s largest 3D model marketplace, for a whopping $75,000,000.
Shutterstock: “Go and work somewhere else” to employees complaining about image censorship in China
A few months ago, the Chinese government reportedly required Shutterstock to start censoring some topics for China-based users. Some Shutterstock employees disagreed, claiming that “blacklisting” search terms wasn’t in accordance with the right of free speech. But one of the executives responded to it by basically telling them to go and work somewhere else.
Lady Gaga shares watermarked photo, Shutterstock responds. Then Twitter exploded
It sometimes amazes me how big artists can be ignorant of copyright laws. Take this latest incident with Lady Gaga from earlier this week.
Lady Gaga tweeted a short “can y’all stop” message. Now, this message would have been a no-story unless it was accompanied by a photo of a masked girl wearing headphones. Headphones and a Shutterstock watermark.
Shutterstock replied to that tweet with a link to the image page on Shutterstock, a message about supporting the artist and a winking smiley: “.@ladygaga We hear you! We like artists to be paid for their work too. Here’s a link to the photographer’s work where you can license these quality images: shutterstock … and shutterstock … ?”
Funnily enough, that tweet was Lady Gaga’s response to her new song that was leaked – Stupid Love. According to some sources, this is Lady Gaga’s way of saying stop stealing my song.
Thieves may be selling your photos on Shutterstock
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.
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