Stock Photography’s Last Gasp for Survival Is to Hop Into Bed with the Very AI Systems That Made It Obsolete

W
ith a name like Getty, it doesn’t come as much of a shock to discover that they’ll basically do anything to survive – including entering into a business partnership with the very organisations that made their products defunct.

All things considered, it’s a pretty canny move, because now instead of ChatGPT generating images trained on Getty photos, Getty’s licensed images will be shown inside ChatGPT search/discovery. All of which means they get reach, leverage, and a seat at the table with King of the AI bubble – Sam Altman.

This isn’t Getty’s first move to hop into bed with the companies that raided their underwear drawer though. In January they brokered a deal with Nfinite.ai to “bring 2D Visual Content into the 3D, Physical AI Era” and in October last year they did a licensing deal with Perplexity AI that was clearly the test-bed for this (far more important) Open AI deal.

There’s no word in the press release as to whether this means that Open AI now have official access to Getty’s vaults, perhaps because that particular horse has already bolted and Open AI have already got what they need. But it is apparently a ‘display only’ deal.

Tellingly, there’s also no mention in the Getty press release as to whether or not photographers whose images are surfaced during these ChatGPT searches will receive any financial compensation.

Given how all stock libraries have moved to subscription models, meaning photographers basically get kicked in the bollocks, rather than actually paid, I find it highly unlikely that Getty will do anything as fair-minded as appropriately compensating the photographers who made them rich. When they did the Perplexity deal they said only that it would “improve attribution of our contributors’ work”. Whoop-de-fucking-doo. Attribution won’t pay my fucking mortgage.

Inevitably of course, Getty’s stock soared on the back of the announcement, which was undoubtedly a relief to share holders after the $206.2m net-loss in the company’s 2025’s financials.

The deal also points to a wider shift in the use of chat based AI systems such as ChatGPT, which is as a search engine. Google recently switched to an AI-first mode in their search engine which is undoubtedly a response to the way LLMs are now used to find companies and services, not just rewrite snarky complaint letters to the local council.