Topline
Shares of Getty Images soared more than 150% in premarket trading early on Monday after it announced announced a deal with OpenAI to integrate its digital image libraries into ChatGPT, three years after it sued another AI company alleging copyright infringement.
Key Facts
In a brief announcement on Sunday, Getty Images said it had agreed to a “display agreement” with OpenAI and the company’s licensed images will appear “OpenAI search and discovery experiences within ChatGPT.”
The announcement said the deal will allow ChatGPT to use Getty’s images for generating visual responses, although it is unclear if the AI chatbot will be allowed to alter these images in anyway.
The announcement did not mention any financial terms or say if OpenAI will be allowed to use these images to train its generative AI models.
It’s also unclear if all photo submissions made to Getty, both editorial and stock images, will be covered by the deal or if photographers will have the option to opt out.
How Has The Market Reacted To The Deal?
Early on Monday, Getty’s shares briefly shot up more than 200% before paring some of the gains and settling at $1.35 per share, up 123% from Friday’s close.
What Do We Know About Getty’s Previous AI Lawsuits?
In January 2023, Getty Images announced it was suing Stability AI, the creators of the popular AI image generation tool Stable Diffusion, alleging copyright violation. The suit came after several users noted that some of Stable Diffusions generated images would display a recreation of Getty’s watermark, a potential sign that the model had been trained extensively on Getty’s library. At the time Getty said: “It is Getty Images’ position that Stability AI unlawfully copied and processed millions of images protected by copyright.” At the time Getty noted that it believes AI has the “potential to stimulate creative endeavors,” and it has provided “licenses to leading technology innovators for purposes related to training artificial intelligence systems.”
