“iStock Introduces AI-Powered Image Generator with User Legal Safeguards”
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Getty Images, known for selling stock imagery for digital and print content, has advanced its AI efforts by launching a dedicated image generation service for its subsidiary iStock. This new service, called Generative AI by iStock, allows designers and business users to create ready-to-use visuals from simple text prompts.
What’s unique about this tool is that the images it generates come with legal protections and usage rights, unlike many other image generators. This means businesses can use these images for commercial purposes, such as marketing content, without worrying about them being stolen or misused.
The announcement is Getty’s second significant move in the generative AI space, following the launch of an image generator for its main platform in September. It also follows Shutterstock’s introduction of an AI image generator that adapts images from its library of assets.
Generative AI by iStock was showcased at CES 2024 in Las Vegas. Users can describe what they want, and the tool will generate photo-quality images at up to 4K resolution. Getty has trained this tool on its extensive catalog of licensed images, including exclusive photos, illustrations, and videos, making it a reliable source for licensed AI content. This is particularly important as artists have been suing AI tools for using their artworks without permission. Getty itself has sued Stability AI over similar issues.
By training on a licensed library, Getty assures iStock customers that they will receive commercially safe content. Each generation produces four distinct images, each with legal coverage of up to $10,000, protecting users against the risk of their content being stolen. Additionally, iStock will not add the generated content to its creative library for others to license.
The tool also includes a prompt builder, allowing users to define various aspects of their input, such as the subject, actions, surroundings, color, mood, and aspect ratio.
The image generation is powered by Nvidia’s Picasso AI model library. Getty combined Picasso’s Edify foundation model for visual design with its licensed content to create a bespoke model for the Generative AI by iStock service. This service is available with a dedicated pricing structure for 100 generations. Getty is also launching advanced editing capabilities, including inpainting and outpainting features. Inpainting allows users to replace a specific region of an image with an object specified via text input, while outpainting expands the image to fit various aspect ratios, filling in content based on the original image. These features will be available on iStock and Getty Images, and developers can integrate these capabilities into their creative applications through APIs.
In the competitive AI-driven content generation space, Getty’s AI tools compete with players like Midjourney, DeviantArt, Runway, and Stability AI. Adobe has also released its Firefly model, trained on its proprietary catalog of licensed images, across several Creative Cloud products.