Getty Images, the media brokerage, announced a new service this week at CES 2024 that leverages artificial intelligence models trained on Getty’s stock photo and video libraries at iStock to create new images and licensed artwork.
iStock’s service, called Generative AI, which is powered in part by Nvidia technology, is designed to protect generations of well-known products, people, places or other copyrighted content, Getty claims. Available in 75 languages, it can modify images as well as create new ones and optionally integrate with existing apps and plugins via an API.
The cost is $15 per 100 images created.
“Our main goal with Generative AI by iStock is to give customers an easy and affordable option to use artificial intelligence in their creative process, without fear that something legally protected has infiltrated their data set and could end up in their work ». Grant Farhall, iStock’s Chief Product Officer, said in a press release.
A series of images created with Getty’s new Generative AI from iStock. Image Credits: Getty Images
iStock’s release of Generative AI — Getty’s second GenAI tool — comes as the copyright debate over artificial intelligence heats up.
GenAI models, which “learn” from billions of examples of artwork, e-books, essays and more to create human-like text and images, tend to return those examples when requested in specific ways. (See it fake Disney posters generated by Microsoft’s chatbot.) This is problematic in cases where the examples are subject to copyright and the creator of the model did not obtain permission — or pay a fee — to use them.
In a piece Published this week in IEEE Spectrum, AI critic Gary Marcus and Reid Southen, a visual effects artist, show how AI systems, including OpenAI’s DALL-E 3, emit data even when not specifically asked for. “[There’s] no publicly available tool or database that users could consult to identify a potential breach, nor any guidance to users on how they might do so,” they write.
Some companies developing GenAI applications argue that they are protected by the fair use doctrine, at least in the US, but it is an issue that unlikely to be settled soon.
In the past year or so, artists have filed lawsuits against Stability AI, Midjourney, and DeviantArt, alleging that the models released by the companies infringe on their copyrights by training the artists’ work and creating effects in their style. Separately, Getty Images sued Stability AI for allegedly copying and editing millions of Getty-owned images and associated metadata in the UK
A handful of vendors have begun offering to pay the legal fees of customers involved in copyright lawsuits arising from the use of GenAI tools. Generative AI by iStock also has a policy along those lines — probably as a last resort. Any licensed image a Generative AI customer creates from iStock comes with $10,000 in legal coverage, Getty says.
