OpenAI and Shutterstock Extend Partnership Six More Years

Shutterstock recently announced a continuance of its partnership with leading artificial intelligence (AI) company OpenAI, which will enable its platforms like DALL-E and more to train off of Shutterstock’s enormous data trove of creator content.

As part of the new expanded six-year agreement, OpenAI will have access to massive image, video and music libraries, along with the associated metadata. In return, Shutterstock gains priority access to the latest OpenAI technology and will continue integrating DALL·E’s generative text-to-image capabilities into its own main offerings.

This integration goes beyond manual text-to-image generation and provides Shutterstock users with synthetic editing capabilities. This means users will be able to not only create new content but also edit and transform any image from the Shutterstock library, accelerating ideation and production. Shutterstock and OpenAI also plan to bring generative AI capabilities to mobile users through Shutterstock’s recently acquired GIPHY platform.

Paul Hennessy, CEO of Shutterstock, commented on the partnership expansion, stating, “The renewal and significant expansion of our strategic partnership with OpenAI reinforces Shutterstock’s commitment to driving AI tech innovation and positions us as the data and distribution partner of choice for industry leaders in generative AI.”

The expanded partnership couldn’t come at a more controversial time, with many creators in the entertainment industry and elsewhere expressing their disinterest in AI models training off of their content. With AI advancing at such a rapid rate, the legal grounds for protecting intellectual property are continuing to shift and it will be interesting to see if Shutterstock can maintain its high volume of contributors as it opens up its data to AI learning.

In related news, Elon Musk announces xAI startup designed to “understand the universe”.