Photo agencies refuse AI pictures as they care about artists’ intellectual property
AI art tools are increasingly popular, however Shutterstock and Getty Images are placing restrictions on such content
Getty Images, a platform for user-generated content, stated that uploading and selling of illustrations created with AI art tools like DALL-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion is prohibited. Similar moves have been made by Newgrounds, PurplePort and FurAffinity.
Craig Peters, CEO of Getty Images, states that one of the reasons for the prohibition is his concern for the legality of AI generated content and a need to protect the site’s users.
AI image generator developers claim that the technology is lawful, but there’s no assurance that the claim in the future won’t be refuted. Software like Stable Diffusion is trained using photos with copyrights that have been retrieved from the Internet, including news websites, personal art blogs and stock photo websites like Getty Images.
Scraping is permitted in the US and it appears that the fair use doctrine applies to the software’s output, however, fair use offers less protection for commercial activities like selling photos. Several artists whose work has been plagiarised and copied by businesses that create AI image generators have advocated for additional legislation to control this area.
According to Peters, Getty is merely implementing this policy to prevent danger to customer reputation and brand.
Shutterstock is one of Getty Images’ main rivals and appears to be doing the same in restricting searches for AI content, but hasn’t implemented specific restrictions. Several platforms have already eliminated AI imagery for reasons other than safeguarding users. FurAffinity social art platform claims to have prohibited AI art because it devalues the creations of human artists.
