(a) change your mindset re: "doomed". No one is "doomed".
(b) Things change. Many people are lazy. For some - "typing" is "work". People like instant gratification. Like SUPER instant. If they have to edit out artifacts, or 'click 3 times' to get an image they like - "ugh" - that is too much work for them.
(c) Sales trends change, sales go up, sales go down, then products are re-purposed and sales go up again.

There are people that like to build/work on their own cars. Then there are people who just like to buy a finished product. Same will be for images & videos.

Your time is never "wasted" - you went in eyes open knowing what the "ai" market was like, and wanted to catch a wave. You still could. Or maybe not. Depends on a whole lot of things.

It is certainly a bit scary, there are people who likely never picked up a camera uploading AI imagery, and there will be people who will automate the process, probably happening already. This same level of concern should also be hitting the agencies who don't allow uploading of AI imagery, I suspect that will change as well....at some point all agencies will accept it.

I can see it happening. I am down to 30-40% which is concerning.
Non-qualified people also have entered the market and have flooded everything with AI.

AI image/video generation should be for licensed professionals only!!   

This is a slow time in the year. No reason to panic.

Many customers are still deciding o their projects for 2024 and this Monday was a holiday i the US, so people take time off.

If everybody is reporting an abrupt  slowdown in sales it is not because of more competing files. those changes come slowly.

Check the search positios of your content. If they haven't changed and you cannot see new better files right next to yours, the slowdown is general sales.

One question I have is that why would people sell AI images on stock agencies because if I understand correctly AI images can not be copyrighted?

No, I think you misunderstood something. There was just a ruling in the US where the copyright office denied copyright to some AI created comic. But the US is not the world - despite what some people think - it's just like 4% of the world population and whatever a judge decides in the US, has no consequences to the rest of the world.
Other countries made different decisions or no decisions about the issue at all.

https://www.technollama.co.uk/chinese-court-declares-that-ai-generated-image-has-copyright

In the United States, a federal judge ruled in 2023 that AI artwork cannot meet federal copyright standards because �Copyright law is �limited to the original intellectual conceptions of the author�.� With no author, there is no copyright.

What am I missing - no human author - no copyright?

I don't understand.

Thanks Derby I'm not in US so I don't know how copyright laws are changed and made law (not asking you to explain) more research on my part.

Thanks again

The easiest tool for copying is not ai but a normal camera.

In fact it is usually a lot faster to copy a bestselling image by just taking a similar picture.

Also customers and clients, if they really want to save money, they can just take pictures with their iphones. Including things like wood backgrounds, green grass and sky etc...a lot of the content that is ultrageneric is very, very easy to take yourself.

And yet here we are.

And if it is true that Shutterstock is getting 50% less content even if they don't take any ai but on Adobe sales are increasing although or probably because they have an additional ai collection, then ai content is our friend that brings more subscribers to the agency that pays us more and treats us well.

The easiest way to deal with ai worries is to just try it yourself. Even just for fun, you don't have to sell it.

It becomes easier to understand that it is just a tool, like Photoshop is a tool.

The easiest tool for copying is not ai but a normal camera.

In fact it is usually a lot faster to copy a bestselling image by just taking a similar picture.

It really depends on what is depicted in the bestseller. It is not so easy to copy a picture of a tropical beach with palm trees or of an iceberg, unless you somewhere near them or travel there anyway.

Also customers and clients, if they really want to save money, they can just take pictures with their iphones. Including things like wood backgrounds, green grass and sky etc...a lot of the content that is ultrageneric is very, very easy to take yourself.

Even images of stuff that is seemingly available everywhere are no always that easy to copy.

For example really clear blue sky with a nice cloud distribution does not occur as often as you might think. And if you want a specific type of clouds like cirrus clouds, you may have to wait a long time until you get an opportunity to get a really nice picture.

The easiest tool for copying is not ai but a normal camera.

In fact it is usually a lot faster to copy a bestselling image by just taking a similar picture.

Also customers and clients, if they really want to save money, they can just take pictures with their iphones. Including things like wood backgrounds, green grass and sky etc...a lot of the content that is ultrageneric is very, very easy to take yourself.

And yet here we are.

And if it is true that Shutterstock is getting 50% less content even if they don't take any ai but on Adobe sales are increasing although or probably because they have an additional ai collection, then ai content is our friend that brings more subscribers to the agency that pays us more and treats us well.

The easiest way to deal with ai worries is to just try it yourself. Even just for fun, you don't have to sell it.

It becomes easier to understand that it is just a tool, like Photoshop is a tool.

I'm not an experienced AI prompter, but I wonder whether that's really the case. I can imagine a lot of situations where AI prompting seems to be faster and cheaper than actually producing the image. Finding (and if needed, renting) a location, finding (and if needed hiring) the right models, propping a set, hiring a photographer (or investing your own time) and do post-production seems to be way more time-consuming and costly than paying a competent AI prompter to generate the AI image. Thinking of generic business settings here for example, or generic lifestyle situations. 

I agree that it's just an additional tool, and that there's no other way than embrace it. It won't go away, it's here to stay and to play a dominant role in certain market segments. But it also opens up the market to to a lot more people than only photo/videographers. I'm convinced that having photography skills can also improve your AI prompting quality, but it's no hard requirement. So this definitely brings in more competition (yes, just like what smartphones did to DSLR's and what DSLR's did to SLR's...) resulting in lower individual sales volumes for those who are competing in those very saturated segments.

imho it all comes down to a very simple logic. The market might still be growing, the supply, driven by technology, is even growing stronger, and some segments are becoming even more saturated than they already are. This causes lower individual sales volumes, lower value for individual content. This is what we are seeing for quite some years now, and if you ask me AI will speed up that process.

Maybe even up to a point where buyer experience is disturbed, because they will get the feeling to be looking for a needle in a haystack, but that's a different discussion :-).

Appreciate it is in grey zone but just because agencies adjust their terms of service if AI can't be copyrighted (ok debatable) why would people pay for AI images on the agencies they could just download and use for free. 

Appreciate it is in grey zone but just because agencies adjust their terms of service if AI can't be copyrighted (ok debatable) why would people pay for AI images on the agencies they could just download and use for free.

They pay for the same reason they don�t just steal content from the internet or download a file with a commercial cc license from flickr: quality control of the file by Adobe and legal reassurance.

The majority of content used on the planet is stolen, not paid.

Then there are agencies with tons of �free� content.

And then there is the cheapest option: take your own picture with your mobile phone.

And now there is ai.

The most important thing we sell is TIME, not content.

The customer can browse the edited collections of agencies and save tons of time.

High end customers can also ask for personal curations from the agency editors to save even more time. Personal service that is still cheaper than making your team search.

Content can be sourced from many places, often even for free, but a if you compare browsing Adobe to sifting through Billions? of free images on flickr�it is not comparable at all.

The marketing team employees are expensive, stock agencies are a very, very cheap resource compared to other options.

So, if Unspalsh didn�t destroy all the agencies and the billions of free flickr files don�t stop the downloads, why would ai?