Can this industry remain to be a sustainable source of income for us in the following decades? And what are the alternatives if not?


I guess the key questions regarding this subject are:

1. How good will AI image and video generators become over time - will the people rather browse and buy finished content done by "professionals" or they will just type the sentence or keywords and click "generate"?

2. How much the genuine human content will be in demand?

3. Will the race to the bottom ever end, or everything will sooner or later become free? (which would probably mean "game over" for the most of us)

And what happened to the horse and buggy operators in the early 1900s when cars started to develop?  This is the same thing, only a century later.

People will have to pivot and adapt in their own way.

We all know the palette the agencies use to try to get rid of us. "Exciting news", numerous rejections with shady reasons, or terminating accounts for whatever reason they come up with.  The end is near. We have seen this before with automation. One assembly worker was replaced with a machine that is now supervised by two engineers. AI will hit its limits. It may take some time to realize that, because the executives are too enthusiastic about getting rid of us, and get the whole share of the peanuts they sell imagery for themselves. 
Will it be feasible to develop AI for purposes that sell with so little profit?

We will have to adapt to whatever comes. For my part I have changed my profession to something else that does not involve photograpy or videography.

Think about it this way. 20 years ago, there was no microstock photography. There was stock photography where photographers were paid handsomely for their images. All that changed with shutterstock and the gradual race to the bottom. Why do you think things will be the same 20 years later? There's no reason why what happened to traditional stock photography wouldn't happen to microstock when VR and AR devices become the norm a few years later.

People will have lenses in and will be recording eveything and streaming live to whatever is hot to watch by then.

There is no future in this industry. Self proclaimed AI artists are the biggest joke here. They will not survive for even a year. Everyone will soon have the abbility the create every picture they want and it will be flawless.

My advice, go do something else before you run out of money. This is a dead end street. Cash your last payouts for the next year or two (maybe three?) but that will be it.

From a platforms (microstock site) perspective in 10-20 years most likely a growth business.
From a contributors persective it has been an industry in decline for years and will continue to do so.

It is very difficult to be profitable when you only get pennies for your work. Take into account there have only been cuts in royalties from all platforms and never an increase and also factor in increased costs and inflation.

That amazing 0.10c to 0.33c we make has actually lost value. The the top 3 platforms are owned by corporations who only serve the shareholders.

Don't spend it all in one spot kids.

I have no crystal ball, but there is also this possibility :  in 10 years, people might 've gotten so used to AI and working with AI generators, that there is no longer any NEED for stock agencies - people will generate the images and videos themselves, without using stock agencies.  The libraries could be completely obsolete.  So what will be left for us?  Direct clients: photographing the people (and their pets) for portraits.  Beside stock photography, I'm also a newborn photographer, and at this moment, I can't see how AI will be able to replace that in the near future.  People will still want to document the important life events like births and weddings.  People will still want a beautiful portrait of their family, in their best dresses, with makeup and the whole "experience" of a photo session?  So who will be the losers then?  The agencies themselves?

I have no crystal ball, but there is also this possibility :  in 10 years, people might 've gotten so used to AI and working with AI generators, that there is no longer any NEED for stock agencies - people will generate the images and videos themselves, without using stock agencies.  The libraries could be completely obsolete.

I doubt this. People also worried about this when mobile phones started to have excellent image quality. Nobody will work with photographers anymore...they will all take their own pictures...

To be able to generate good images, you need a lot of visual experience to describe what it is you actually want.

People go to agencies because they usually have a vague idea what they need, then dig around the collections until they find something that fits.

What could happen is that they take a screen shot, throw it into an ai and generate a similar image for themselves...but how many would do this? Just like customers rarely hunt across different to see if the image can be found 3 cents cheaper elsewhere.

But the main thing we sell on agencies is time.

The customer has no time.

So I think it will always be a lot easier to browse a huge collection instead of coming up with visual concepts yourself, especially when you don't even know which words are needed to direct the ai.

I think what is more likely, is that customers use ai to tweak an image they found to perfection.

The perfect group photo of guys having fun...but no beards? use ai to give them all beards.

Love the family on the beach...ask the ai to transport them to a winter setting with winter clothes...

Something like that...

This industry will change without a doubt, for better or worse. Everything changes over time, whether it's new technology, new social norms, new fashion trends. The big question is: are you able to adapt? I'd like to think we creatives are able to use our artistic skills to adapt and make the changes in the industry work for us rather than against us. Life, uh, finds a way.

The work I produce today is very different to what I started out doing.

I agree, just "pushing a button" is not what makes our images sell.

Just "writing a prompt" is not what I do when I create content with the assistance of ai.

The whole research, mood board, concept, design choices for color, lighting, angles....it does not happen by itself.

I take photos and videos every day???

You live in a dreamworld.

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While I agree to an extent, 1x Horse buggy driver = 1x car driver (to an extent). AI = potentially millions of lost jobs with minimal new opportunities to replace it. I mean, how many AI programers will be needed. When mechanical equipment replaced the horse and cart on the farm, there were a lot of new jobs coming up to replace the massive job losses in the countryside. I really don't see a massive increase in new jobs to replace all the jobs lost.

I think a lot of political figures etc are starting to realise the implications now. The same as they cheered home working because of its environmental benefits only to backpedal when they realised how many city centre jobs would be lost. The lost Tax revenue of people not working has potential to cause massive problems to health and public services that are not directly effected by AI but due to the reduction in money will available due to lost taxes. You can't just tax companies otherwise they'll leave or invest elsewhere.

We are certainly entering a challenging phase, I just need to get by for 10-12 years before I retire but, I really feel for the young going forward with fewer jobs available and more and more people fighting for them.

the biggest problem when facing automation changes is that most thinking is within the box of our capitalist system that results in vast inequality.  enormous profits go to shareholders & owners & employers squeezed from the work of others. redistribution (aka tax the rich) would allow a softer landing for the displaced with job training, education and as a last resort guaranteed incomes.  it's not an impossible path, in theory. but it would require major changes in the US, less so in EU, but those in power have no incentive to make any changes.

i dont have a major stake in the future, but as you say, there's concern for the next generations; so i support progressive movements pushing the rock up the hill -=- I retired early from my previous career in online gaming (in the 80s) & other computer consulting to pursue other interests. my current income is low but i don't have major expenses.  my ms sales pay for some of my travel

delete

I have to agree. Now that Dall-e2 is available to everyone it's a piece of cake to generate any image you want, all for free. The only extra step a contributor has to do is to upscale the AI generated art.

Theoretically even 7-8 year old children can be contributors now, if the stock site policy allows it.

Nobody can tell  the state of microstock industry earnings in 10 - 20 years.
About 20 years ago istock, shutterstock started.
Now AI is at the starting line.
AI is a tool like DSLR have been at the beginning of microstock. This tool is much more intelligent than a DSLR.
I guess the complete process of stockphostography can be done by a script in a few years. Making the image, editing, keyboarding, uploading, etc,.. So don't forget some users with powerful workstation uploading hundreds of images a day to free sites.
So i guess an enormous number of AI Images uploading at free sites will be hard competition for stock photographers. 

I compared at shutterstock.

10 years ago, I had 11 SODs in the whole month of July. These brought an average of $23.96 per SOD.

So far this July, after just over half a month, I have 27 SODs. The average take per SOD is $1.18, which is down to one-twentieth.

What that will look like in 10 years is anyone's guess....

Quote from: cobalt on July 11, 2023, 06:43

I agree, just "pushing a button" is not what makes our images sell.

Just "writing a prompt" is not what I do when I create content with the assistance of ai.

The whole research, mood board, concept, design choices for color, lighting, angles....it does not happen by itself.

Yeah, as if Ai tools were really eben able to execute color, lighting and angles exactly the way you describe them. Keep telling you that....

"Just writing a prompt" is exactly what you do when you have an AI create content for you....

I don't understand why people are trying to  tell others that this was some complex work, when the others they are talking to have access to Ai image generators just as well and understand how this works. I created thousands of AI images myself by now, I sell as many as real photos by now (even though I have much more real photos in my port!). I understand how this works and I can SEE for myself that AI can create amazing looking images that sell like hot cake by "just writing a prompt". The most effort AI images take is keywording them and no one can convince me to believe otherwise. I can create an image that would have taken me 1 hour of setting up and 50$ in material within 10 seconds and for the price of about 0,00001$ now.

Probably one day Ai image generators will really be so complex that you can describe exactly what you want down to the angle of a hand. But right now it isn't.

Maybe you have to keep telling that lie to customers, to keep them from figuring out too soon that they do not need you anymore and can create the images they want themselves just as easily as you (Oh, they will figure it out eventually!), but you cannot fool other contributors who have been creating AI images for months now.

Then I must be totally useless at prompting, because the images I want, I very, very rarely get them on the first prompt.

There is lots of 80% quality that I probably could upload, but I prefer to have things my way.

Might send the rest to wirestock, but I would like to fill my Adobe port with things that fit me. I don't want another endless "oh another prompter port".

But I am not using midjourney, perhaps that is indeed the magical engine that can read minds and give you perfect images with one sentence.

eta

Once Firefly is available for commercial use, I wanted to use mostly firefly. But I have to admit, I am not very impressed with the results.

I hope they drastically upgrade the quality.

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Then I must be totally useless at prompting, because the images I want, I very, very rarely get them on the first prompt.
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But I am not using midjourney, perhaps that is indeed the magical engine that can read minds and give you perfect images with one sentence.
...

Honestly, I think this is at least partly it. I tried Dalle again recently and was shocked to see it hadn't really improved since I first tried it when all this stuff started taking off. Midjourney is light years ahead. Other engines based on stable diffusion are also very good, but I don't have a lot of experience of others.

Currently working on a series with specific types of tea and I can maybe use 5% of the results.

If you just want some kind of cup with a hot drink, that is easy, but if you want something specific the results are horrible.

But perhaps Midjourney would give perfect results, who knows.

when i asked for making omelets on flames of a gas stove i ended up with  flaming omelets - great presentation.  (in RL i discovered that if I add wine to a skillet after removing a steak, the wine will burst into flames)

Quote from: offisapup on July 10, 2023, 13:17

Think about it this way. 20 years ago, there was no microstock photography. There was stock photography where photographers were paid handsomely for their images. All that changed with shutterstock and the gradual race to the bottom. Why do you think things will be the same 20 years later? There's no reason why what happened to traditional stock photography wouldn't happen to microstock when VR and AR devices become the norm a few years later.

iStock started charging for pics in 2001.

I suspect the slide will continue and despite inflation everywhere else we will get a smaller percent of each cheaper sale which will be greatly diluted by the absolutely massive image libraries and all of the AI generated offerings. Will there be people still making money - yes, but it will be more difficult.

Correct iStock was first.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_photography

Here's a summary and what I think.

The early microstock company iStockphoto was founded in May 2000. Originally a free stock imagery website, it transitioned into its current micropayment model in 2001.

Shutterstock was founded in 2003 with a monthly subscription fee. In 2004 Dreamstime was founded as new microstock agency. By 2007 Dreamstime was competing with iStockphoto, Fotolia and Shutterstock, all expanded into major microstock companies

Between the 1990s and the mid-2000s, Bill Gates' Corbis Images and Getty Images combined, purchased more than 40 stock photo agencies. iStockphoto was acquired by Getty in 2006. In February 2009, Jupitermedia Corporation sold their online stock images division, Jupiterimages, to Getty Images for $96 million in cash, including the sites stock.xchng and StockXpert.

The stock photo company Fotolia announced that it would be acquired by Adobe for $800 million on December 11, 2014.

Corbis Images grew to include other stock photo brands like Veer, Corbis Motion and GreenLight. In 2016, Corbis was sold to, Visual China Group. All content outside Asia is distributed by Getty Images.

Even if we don't see the line of reasoning from the history, because of our position, Getty (like them or not) will eventually end up on top of the whole photo market. For micropayment, there will be SSTK, iStock, Adobe as the leaders with DT as a middle level, and the rest will be minor or disappear. The boom is over.

State of the market and earnings? How low can they go?

I thought 25� was minimal ten years ago, and the agencies proved me wrong. They cut levels, cut prices, and cut commissions. We now get a smaller pay per download as a result. When enough artists stop working Microstock and start doing something else, the value will stabilize. Until then, financial facts say, on a basic economic system, Supply is far exceeding the Demand, too many images, too many artists, and the buyers are in command of driving price competition by the distribution agencies.

In any case, the value and get paid for our work will not be going up, except in specific need areas. General stock, common images, things that almost everyone can shoot anywhere will be just what it is. Common over supplied, minimal value image products.

If anyone believes there's a market for sand in the Sahara or ice in the arctic, then you might think the future of Microstock is positive and there will be a return of income and value. Not going to happen! I can be fairly confident in my prediction that things will get worse and will never get better than they are now, and never return to close to how things were in 2013.

In 10-20 years, these will be the good old days?

Well I am here to find out if the doom and gloom is true.

Trying to rebuild my stock income after a nearly 10 year absence (except for eyeem/twenty20).

When I look through the agency content, there are so many incredible loopholes and easy to shoot stuff missing, so I hope I still have a future.

Even editorial. You would think that my city has been done to death, but once you move away from the cathedral, the rest of the city landmarks and touristy places are not documented.

I was actually very surprised.

Then you upload content and you are basically the only person providing that.

I am also trying to make a small travel plan, look at the tourist or interesting things around me and do one or two a month.

Just because agencies have millions of files, or maybe Getty might soon have 1 billion, doesn't mean their libraries are complete.

And it reliably leads people back to our port.

One more plus: when people look through my ports there is no real bestseller to copy. I have a very wide mix of content that somehow sells, but it will not really show up if people keep looking for bestsellers to copy.

But especially with local editorial I might be the only one offering something.

The long trail portfolio might have a better chance of survival as the �only single bestsellers� ports in the future. Because they will find themselves mercilessly copied with ai.

How would the ai know what sells and is a bestseller?

And everyone doing that will just lead to even more copies.