Getty Images launches an AI-powered image generator

Getty Images, one of the largest suppliers of stock images, editorial photos, videos and music, today announced the launch of a generative AI art tool that it claims is “commercially safer” than other, rival solutions on the market.

Called Generative AI by Getty Images, the tool — powered by an AI model provided by Nvidia, with whom Getty has a close technical partnership — was trained on a portion of Getty’s vast library (~477 million assets) of stock content. Along the lines of popular text-to-image platforms like OpenAI’s DALL-E 3 and Midjourney, Getty’s tool renders images from text descriptions of the images, or prompts — e.g. “photo of a sandy tropical island filled with palm trees.”

Customers creating and downloading visuals using the tool will receive Getty’s standard royalty-free license, Getty says, which includes indemnification — i.e., protection against copyright lawsuits — and the right to “perpetual, worldwide, nonexclusive” use across all media.

The tool isn’t completely unfettered, however.

While Getty’s content library includes depictions of public figures, Getty says that it’s imposed safeguards to prevent its generative tool from being used for disinformation or misinformation — or from replicating the style of a living artist. For example, the tool won’t let a customer create a photo of Joe Biden in front of the White House or a cat in the style of Andy Warhol, reports The Verge, which had access to the tool ahead of its release. And all images created by the tool contain a watermark identifying them as AI-generated.

“We’ve worked hard to develop a responsible tool that gives customers confidence in visuals produced by generative AI for commercial purposes,” Craig Peters, CEO at Getty Images, said in a press release.

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