Getty to launch Generative AI tool trained on its own images

Stock library company Getty Images has announced it is to release its own generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool, Generative AI by Getty Images, that aims to be 'commercially safe', as the company joins an increasingly crowded marketplace of generative AI tools all jostling to stake their claim in the emerging technology. 

2023 has already seen the announcement of multiple AI generation tools, including Adobe's Firefly, the upcoming DALL-E 3 from OpenAI, and revisions of existing products like Stable Diffusion, Midjourney and others. 

Getty's tool has been developed in partnership with NVIDIA, and is trained solely from Getty Images’ vast creative library, including its exclusive premium content, with full indemnification for commercial use.

“We’re excited to launch a tool that harnesses the power of generative AI to address our customers’ commercial needs while respecting the intellectual property of creators,” said Craig Peters, CEO at Getty Images. 

“We’ve worked hard to develop a responsible tool that gives customers confidence in visuals produced by generative AI for commercial purposes.”

The announcement of the tool comes after Getty announced in January it was suing Stability AI for copyright infringement, alleging its image generator Stable Diffusion used Getty photos to train its tool without permission. 

Getty says it will pay creators if it uses their AI-generated image to train the current and future versions of the model, and it will also share revenues generated from the tool, “allocating both a pro rata share in respect of every file and a share based on traditional licensing revenue.”

The company said any photos created with the tool will not be included in the Getty Images and iStock content libraries.

Unlike rival products, the tool has limitations on the type of content it can produce. It is unable to produce imagery with prompts using the name of an actual person.

Speaking to The Verge, Getty said the model “doesn’t know who Andy Warhol, Joe Biden, or any other real-world person is” because it doesn’t want to manipulate or recreate real-life events.

Generative AI by Getty Images can now be enabled on GettyImages.com, and customers can also choose to integrate the service into their existing workflows and applications through an available API. The ability to add your own images to train the tool will be added later this year.