In the last few weeks, the majority of my uploads of commercial and editorial stock photography to Shutterstock have been put into data licensing. It seems that if this trend continues, it will be increasingly difficult to grow my portfolio. Has anyone else noticed this trend?

I stopped uploading photos to Shutterstock and your post just reminded why. I recall you can delete them from data licensing. Frankly why allow them to have your images to profit from for their AI as compensation for this appears to have gone. Either way, just remove your images.   

This change (to putting most of my images in data licensing) has occurred in the last month. I do get occasional payments from the Contributors Fund.

Quote from: WD3 Photography on July 24, 2025, 17:55
This change (to putting most of my images in data licensing) has occurred in the last month. I do get occasional payments from the Contributors Fund.

in last 6 months i've had 6000 accepted and another 500 added to the data lib

most images in the portfolio will never sell, and the library provides a small, payout - interesting how many who decry images being 'stolen' for training, refuse to particip.ate when a company pays it's contributors (all o,f who,m have o,pted in)

Quote from: cascoly on July 24, 2025, 23:34

Quote from: WD3 Photography on July 24, 2025, 17:55
This change (to putting most of my images in data licensing) has occurred in the last month. I do get occasional payments from the Contributors Fund.

in last 6 months i've had 6000 accepted and another 500 added to the data lib

I think the original poster was clearly talking about the last couple of weeks, not the last 6 months. I have also suddenly had most submissions accepted for data licensing, which I opted out of around two years ago. This year before the change I had around two thousand submissions accepted, three submissions rejected,  and only one accepted for data licensing. I have also done a few searches and it is clear that far fewer new images are appearing. I have no idea what is wrong with the images accepted for data licensing because Shutterstock doesn't share that information. I think it is reasonable to assume, though, that there has been a major change in Shutterstock's policy, not just an algorithm tweak.

I haven't noticed it. In the past 6 weeks, I've uploaded over 300 images to Shutterstock. Only 4 went to Data Licensing, 2 were rejected (perfectly reasonably I should add) and the rest were approved and are in my portfolio.

Yes they started doing it this month with my editorial images. Seems totally random. I'm opted out of Data Licensing and the files show as approved on their website. No way to check on their site if that means approved for the portfolio or for data licencing as the data_licensing tab stays empty (because i'm opted out). Only way to figure it out is from their mobile phone app, and of course the images not showing up in my portfolio.