Just received email about nominations for the free collection - $4 for one year or $10 in perpetuity

"How much do I get paid for each image? 
You have the opportunity to renew your files for a 1-year term or for perpetual use.

One-year term: For each selected file included in the free collection, you�ll receive an upfront payment of USD 4, for the one-year term.
Perpetual Use: For each selected file included in the free collection, you�ll receive an upfront payment of USD 10, for perpetual use."

I don't and won't participate in the free collection, but for those who do, cutting the annual payment seems like a low blow to me

I know no more than was posted this afternoon. Not clear to me how a combined company would be better off from the investor point of view - both are struggling to grow at the rate investors want to see.

From the contributor point of view, both agencies have a history of forcing down royalty rates, so there's probably not much good news for suppliers.

Happy New Year!

https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/getty-images-explores-merger-with-shutterstock-bloomberg-news-reports-2025-01-03/

https://finance.yahoo.com/video/getty-images-exploring-merger-shutterstock-212322433.html

https://seekingalpha.com/news/4392448-getty-images-soars-on-report-that-shutterstock-is-interested-in-a-merger

Seeking Alpha incorrectly says that Getty went public in 2008 - they were bought by Hellman & Friedman in 2008 and taken private.

Probably unrelated: Adobe's stock dropped to $430.57 this afternoon after UBS issued a report describing "headwinds" in trying to monetize AI

https://finance.yahoo.com/m/c900c577-54a7-3e19-8e4a-db5d77ad79e8/adobe-stock-falls-as-ubs.html

From Barrons: "Adobe has increasingly embraced AI, rolling out its Firefly suite and incorporating generative AI tools into its flagship photo-editing software. However, UBS said early leaders like OpenAI, Runway, and Midjourney may outpace Adobe in the battle for a market the bank described as �fiercely competitive.�"

This morning the total collection on Adobe Stock was 604,562,465. Four years ago (Nov 30 2020) it was 238,609,759. Today, the genAI portion of the collection was 205,613,425 - very close to the total collection size 4 years earlier.

Adobe Stock's math is strange - if you exclude AI images it says the total is 399,025,915. Add that to the genAI total and an extra 76,875 images appear. I'm assuming the numbers are mostly right and don't worry about 100k here or there

Yesterday I looked at the entire collection sorted by downloads and noted that the first few pages were almost all free items (they're marked). On the first page, 91/100 were freebies; on page 2 it was 78/100. I'm sure Adobe would argue that the freebies bring in overall business to the site, but it's sad that all time best sellers are so drowned out by freebies.

When I looked at the genAI collection sorted by downloads, what stood out was how most of them could very well have been traditional stock images/illustrations/3D renders.

The top selling genAI image is an isolated red arrow - and that's on page 4 of the entire collection bestseller list. A fine simple curved arrow.

There are over 750k images for a search on red arrow (about 114k genAI).

Looking in the Discord group where new contributors ask about why their AI images were rejected it became clear that there were some truly terrible images being submitted. I'd previously focused on my (growing) collection of truly terrible genAI images accepted The Apple logos have gone, but the quality of what's getting accepted doesn't help buyers. There's also repetitive items - I made a screenshot this morning of 53 near-identical Christmas arrangements on a wood table - candles, cinnamon sticks, pine cones, etc. from one contributor. All of us who've been around a while have received rejections for "similars". Not sure what value there is for customers in 53 horizontal versions of the same scene.

Then there was the white "bumblebee" with 8 legs, my fire hazard collection (candles setting the house on fire); staircases that'll kill you, crabs & lobsters not found on planet earth; a Happy Thanksgiving word sign with the T and the g cut off; "MCRRY CHRISTMAS"; "AGEESIM"..... All recent acceptances. All useless except to illustrate that genAI produces pretty slop a lot of the time. And which should not have been accepted into a top tier collection of stock.

And ADBE is down again this morning.

Adobe (ADBE) announced their quarterly results Dec 11 after the market closed. The stock dropped in after hours trading and continued to fall today - closed today at $474.63 a share, down $75.30 (13.69%) from yesterday.

The revenue and earnings for the quarter were good but the lower than expected growth for the coming fiscal year disappointed investors. They're worried that Adobe isn't able to "monetize" AI tools.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/analysts-revisit-adobe-stock-price-123216031.html

https://www.investors.com/news/technology/adobe-stock-ai-monetization-in-focus/?src=A00220

From a Barron's article that's behind a paywall:

"Investors are concerned the company isn�t yet seeing major gains from its AI offerings, which it has been monetizing for about a year now. One of those offerings is Firefly, which gives Adobe users the ability to use gen-AI to create images and videos from text, edit images using AI, and more. " . . . �We don�t see GenAI helping to bend the growth curve in the foreseeable future. And [with] guide suggesting growth is teetering on single digits, we think this will weigh on valuations,�

From our perspective as contributors, I think the major concern for 2025 would be that our content will be used as needed to support their "AI tools and features are driving revenue/profit growth" message which may end up with lower royalty revenues for us. As we have been promised 33% of either customer payment or a computed payment for unlimited plans, that can still be true but meaningless. 33% of eff-all is eff-all.

The other day Adobe and Box announced a collaboration via Adobe Express. There was no specific mention of stock images (versus the customer's own product images) but if these are very low cost/high usage plans, we could see our "custom" royalties drop.

https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2024/12/10/adobe-express-for-box-bringing-together-creativity-collaboration-in-the-cloud

One analyst noted that Adobe had pointed to slower subscriber growth:

https://www.gurufocus.com/news/2631524/adobe-shares-slide-as-revenue-forecast-misses-expectations-ai-competition-looms

Adobe's slides and press release are on their Investor Relations page:

https://www.adobe.com/investor-relations.html

Adobe's CEO noted in his statement at the beginning of the earnings call that Firefly-powered generations had surpassed 16 billion. At first that struck me as a very big number for a not-very-good genAI tool. Uncharitably I first thought it meant that you had to generate so many times to get anything usable, thus driving up their counts!

I think the odd phrasing means that they're counting the Remove tool (Phtoshop and Lightroom) and the various generative expand options - those are OK for very low res images or very small sections, but are otherwise not up to scratch. I don't know how they're tracking every use of the Remove tool with Generative AI turned on, but assume they must be to calculate credits usage.

So the big number may be accurate, but not really comparable to Midjourney or any other genAI tool


Edited Dec 13 to add an article link:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/lack-roi-ai-investments-rattles-190529459.html

"The earnings report is missing one key metric: Return on AI investments. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that the company does not even have a metric to measure those returns with. Investors can be very short-sighted, and they want to see visible improvements. AI offerings were supposed to improve the company�s subscriber base. They didn�t. The investments were supposed to aid the growth of a company that was otherwise reaching a stage of maturity. They didn�t. So what can the company do better during the next year so that 2026 is different?

That�s the million-dollar question that shareholders want answered. The company�s strategy will become clear with time. But with modest growth prospects, and reliance on share buybacks to reward investors, many shareholders are likely looking for a better investment."

ADBE was down again today; dropped as low as $456, but closed at $465.69.

Edited Dec 16: ADBE down today, closing at $461.53

The total collection size is now 603,641,179. In the last 6 days (Dec 10 - 16) it has grown by over 5 million (5,159,959). Over 4.2 million of that 5 million were genAI.

Edited Dec 17: ADBE down, closing at $455.23. That's down almost $100 a share since results were announced last week (closed at $549.93 Dec 11).

I was looking at November's totals and comparing to prior years. For Adobe Stock I noticed a surprising $$ total for Nov 2018 and dug a little to see why.

The number of downloads was only slightly higher than Nov 2024 and the much higher $$ was a result of 3 custom royalties of $94.05 each. That sort of number was often seen in SS SOD's but I don't think that happened at AS where extended licenses have netted us about $26 and the low volume subscriptions $3.30 royalties.

These were images, not video.

I looked at the old forum posts here to see if I'd asked about these nice bonuses, but apparently not. I'd love them to come back, but I'm not holding my breath

Anyone else who was with Adobe Stock in 2018 see large royalties in November?

I haven't posted about SSTK performance or Shutterstock's financials in a while, but I do monitor what they're up to.

https://investor.shutterstock.com/news-releases/news-release-details/shutterstock-reports-third-quarter-2024-financial-results

Earnings call from earlier today:

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4730421-shutterstock-inc-sstk-q3-2024-earnings-call-transcript

You can find other investor-focused materials via their web site:

https://investor.shutterstock.com/

Lots of hand-waving, buzzwords and happy talk in the earnings call transcript, but from a contributor's perspective, it's hard to ignore the declines in paid downloads, subscribers and how stagnant the business seems to be if you look at the details versus the CEO's chit-chat.

They celebrated that the decline in "content" revenue was slowing - it only declined 7% this quarter versus 9% in Q2 and 10% in Q1

Paid downloads - that's how contributors make money - in Q3 2024 were 32.9 million, down from 33.4m in Q2, down from 36.4m in Q3 last year (2023). In Q3 2022 there were 42.8 million paid downloads.

They've changed now they report revenue - now it's Content and Data, Distribution & Services; they used to break out E-commerce (the web site) from Enterprise (corporate deals). And with various acquisitions - Pond5 last year and Envato this year - more revenue gets added to the totals, but it isn't doing much for growth. It's barely slowing the decline.

For Q3 2024 Content revenue included Envato for the first time. Take out Envato and they reported $166 million for the quarter, versus $233 million in 2023. Even in Q3 2022 and 2021 revenue was higher - $204 million and $194 million!!

Data revenue was supposed to be a huge growth area, although still small compared to content revenue. For Q3 2024 it was $47 million versus $54.5m in 2023.

During the earnings call and analyst asked about revenue from Giphy. More talk about huge increased views of GIFs (not about $$) and the note that revenue from Giphy was folded into the overall Data number and won't be broken out

The number of subscribers is down as well - 470k versus 551k for Q3 2023 (or 607k in Q3 2022)

An analyst asked if Envato's unlimited subscriptions were taking away from regular SS subscriptions and Hennessey said "...we�re seeing the work that they did on the customer experience, the work that they�ve done with the rebrand is driving new subs into the franchise. And so we�re more bullish today on the growth and the product market fit of Envato than we were when we acquired the company..."

An analyst asked for more detail on the content business beyond that the decline in that was slowing; when would it get back to growth? Hennessey said:

"On the Content business, look, I don�t know what day we cross over, but we�re making really good progress. The changes that we�ve made, everything from coming off the free trial to reintroducing our smaller packs, as I mentioned, and our core subscription product is getting traction. We�re seeing growth in the business and you start to see the level of the decline is shrinking. You mentioned a minus 10 to minus 9, minus 7, and we�re predicting that Q4 is better than that.

So we�re really like what we�re seeing. Then if you add in some of my commentary on the combination of AI in our Content business, we�re now seeing not only existing customers using the AI sub and maintaining their level of stock use, and in many instances, growing that. We�re also starting to see new customers come into the franchise for the AI product and start to use stock content.

So we really like this ecosystem that�s starting to happen of growth in both stock and AI for customer sets. So again, I can�t tell you exactly when we cross over, but I really like the hand that we�ve got, and the core business, ex-Envato, is improving."

I'd translate that to "Darned if I know!"

The only reason they can report "growth" is that they added revenue from acquisitions to their totals."Content" is 81% of their business. The other portion, Data is 19% but was also down 14% compared to a year ago.

SSTK was up today - upbeat guidance for the remainder of the year seems to have cheered investors, but they tend to be an emotionally volatile lot

Separately from the bad news for contributors to SS, it looks to me as if they're running out of road.

Shutterstock will be announcing their Q3 results next Tuesday (31 Oct) so perhaps it's not surprising that they are banging the drum about new AI features in the Shutterstock library:

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/shutterstock-integrates-creative-ai-into-library-of-700m-images-to-offer-first-ever-marketplace-of-fully-customizable-stock-301967961.html

A couple of days ago, one analyst report said the results weren't expected to be good:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/analysts-estimate-shutterstock-sstk-report-140042530.html

"Wall Street expects a year-over-year decline in earnings on higher revenues when Shutterstock (SSTK) reports results for the quarter ended September 2023. While this widely-known consensus outlook is important in gauging the company's earnings picture, a powerful factor that could impact its near-term stock price is how the actual results compare to these estimates."

Blathering on about "infinite options", the CEO opined:

"This is an unprecedented offering in the stock photography industry," said Paul Hennessy, Chief Executive Officer for Shutterstock. "Now, creatives have everything they need to craft the perfect content for any project with AI-powered design capabilities that you can use to edit stock images within Shutterstock's library, presenting infinite possibilities to make stock your own."

It's in beta, but considering the abysmal quality of the Dall-E output that is currently in their AI generated section, it'd have to be much better to actually be useful to customers

Babies   -   Typewriter  -  Podcast illo

They will give a demo 9 Nov

Edited mid-day Friday to note that SSTK (Shutterstock's stock) is around $34.20 which is what it was at the beginning of June 2020 - when Stan Pavlovsky pursued his plan to boost the stock price by looting contributor royalties. Or "margin optimization" as they referred to it.

The stock ended 2020 around $70 and reached as high as $123 in Nov 2021. Except for a brief lurch up to $70 at the beginning of this year, it's been downhill since.

https://investors.gettyimages.com/news-releases/news-release-details/getty-images-launches-commercially-safe-generative-ai-offering
https://www.gettyimages.com/ai/generation/about

"Customers creating and downloading visuals through the tool will receive Getty Images� standard royalty-free license, which includes representations and warranties, uncapped indemnification, and the right to perpetual, worldwide, nonexclusive use in all media. Content generated through the tool will not be added into existing Getty Images and iStock content libraries for others to license. Further, contributors will be compensated for any inclusion of their content in the training set."

https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/25/23884679/getty-ai-generative-image-platform-launch

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2023/09/getty-images-subscribers-to-get-access-to-ai-image-generator/

https://gizmodo.com/getty-new-art-generator-trained-on-contributors-1850866540

"On an annual recurring basis, we will share in the revenues generated from the Getty Images AI Generator with contributors whose content was used to train the AI Generator, allocating both a pro rata share in respect of every file and allocating a share based on traditional licensing revenue. The first payment is expected to be in late 2024 for the year October 2023-September 2024.

We expect this to represent a new revenue stream for contributors that is additive to the licensing benefits you already enjoy with Getty Images."

From the FAQ:

"What are Getty Images� rights to use my/contributor content for AI training?
Our contributor agreements enable Getty Images to license your content in a broad range of uses, existing or emerging, including training data for AI and machine learning uses."

https://apnews.com/article/getty-images-artificial-intelligence-ai-image-generator-stable-diffusion-a98eeaaeb2bf13c5e8874ceb6a8ce196

The Verge article talks about the quality of the results - they got to try it out - and their screen shot looks miles better than Shutterstock's DALL-E 2 equivalent, at least based on what shows up in the generative AI collection on SS.

"I got a hands-on look at Generative AI by Getty Images and got to play around with the tool for a bit. I mainly wanted to see how it generates photos, rather than illustrations, to test out how close to an actual Getty-watermarked picture it can get. And the photos look better than expected. Stock photos already have an artificial, soulless quality to them, and I was not surprised that some of the first few images the tool generated also felt... devoid of feeling. ...

Getty�s tool did well at rendering realistic-feeling human figures. I prompted it to create a photo of a ballerina in an arabesque position (standing on one leg with the other lifted behind) on a stage with a slightly blurred background. The photos I got felt more human than when I tried the same prompt with Stable Diffusion, and the Getty image fooled my friends when I texted it to them. It's clear Getty�s model trained not just on illustrated art but on actual photos. "

https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/25/getty-images-launches-an-ai-powered-image-generator/
https://www.axios.com/2023/09/25/getty-images-ai-creation-tool
https://fortune.com/2023/09/25/getty-images-launches-ai-image-generator-1-8-trillion-lawsuit/

"The difference, said Getty Images CEO Craig Peters, is this new service is �commercially viable� for business clients and �wasn�t trained on the open internet with stolen imagery.�
He contrasted that with some of the first movers in AI-generated imagery, such as OpenAI�s DALL-E, Midjourney and Stability AI, maker of Stable Diffusion.
�We have issues with those services, how they were built, what they were built upon, how they respect creator rights or not, and how they actually feed into deepfakes and other things like that,� Peters said in an interview."

https://petapixel.com/2023/09/25/getty-images-makes-u-turn-as-it-launches-its-own-ai-image-generator/
(emphasis mine) - I like that way of putting the difference between generative AI and photographs
"However, Getty Images will not allow the material made on its new generative AI tool into its content libraries which will be reserved for �real people doing real things in real places.� "

https://www.business-standard.com/world-news/getty-images-working-with-nvidia-to-debut-its-own-ai-image-generator-123092501302_1.html
https://www.engadget.com/getty-is-going-to-offer-ai-generated-images-after-all-140138829.html
https://www.zdnet.com/article/can-microsoft-recover-from-the-collapse-of-its-surface-business/

Edited Sep 26 to add a few more links to press coverage of this announcement

https://decrypt.co/198660/getty-images-launches-safe-generative-ai-image-tool

From the context, "user-generated" is referring to Getty's customers for their AI tool, not contributors to their "pre-shot" collection

"Getty Images says user-generated images and prompts will train its AI models. Still, as Peters explained, user-generated images will not be uploaded to the Getty Images website or licensed by the company.

�So what you generate and the corresponding outputs are yours to decide whether you want to use or not, but we are not bringing those images back into what we call our pre-shot catalog,� Peters said. �And we don't accept AI-generated images into our pre-shot catalog because we don't know the provenance of what it was created with.� "

https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/09/25/1080231/getty-images-promises-its-new-ai-doesnt-contain-copyrighted-art/

"Tech companies claim that AI models are complex and can�t be built without copyrighted content and point out that artists can opt out of AI models, but Peters calls those arguments �crap.�

�I think there are some really sincere people that are actually being thoughtful about this,� he says. �But I also think there�s some hooligans that just want to go for that gold rush.� "

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johanmoreno/2023/09/25/getty-images-debuts-generative-ai-solution-for-copyright-safe-image-generation/

https://digiday.com/media/getty-images-gets-into-the-generative-ai-race-with-its-own-image-platform/

"�There�s technology for technology�s sake, there�s break things and move fast and ignore other people�s rights � and this doesn�t do [any of] that,� Getty Images CEO Craig Peters told Digiday. �It presents a real meaningful, high-quality solution to customers, which is what they�ve been asking for.�

Similar to competitors like Shutterstock and Adobe, Getty Images offers full indemnification for commercial use of AI-generated images. However, unlike some others, Getty�s AI model is trained on only its own licensed content � a selling point for anyone worried about the range of copyright concerns that plague some other AI platforms.

Customers want to embrace generative AI without having to �absorb a massive amount of IP risk in doing that,� Peters said. He added that the plan isn�t to replace human contributors, but rather to �index on creativity� with �another tool in the creator�s toolbox.�"

https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/getty-releases-ai-image-maker-trained-on-own-data-1234680408/
https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2023/09/25/getty-images-generative-ai-platform-music-speculation/

"The concept of unleashing machine learning on a controlled copyright collection is interesting � with a very similar concept rumbling in the music industry. That music-focused model is expected to debut within several weeks, with DMN prepping the story now (stay tuned)."

It might seem fruitless to urge new rules for genAI content when almost none of the current ones are being followed or enforced, but here goes.

Some locations - oil refineries, factories, research labs, outer space - are hard to access for stock photographs. That makes them ripe targets for the genAI factory producers who churn out content based on copying someone else's title and making it a prompt. I know Adobe says "don't do that" but there's a lot in the collection already.

I took a look at some examples of robotic arms in a solar panel factory - or what purported to be that. I then realized I don't know anything about the details of solar panel manufacturing, but did a little searching online to confirm a gut feeling that the genAI copycat content was rubbish. It looks high-tech-ish and robot-ish but it isn't real and arguably would harm the credibility of any buyer who licensed it to use with an article about increasing use of solar panels.

While looking at the human-produced solar panel factory images on Adobe Stock I recognized some of the prompts as ones used for genAI images. I took two and did searches and made screen shots to give a visual example of what I'm talking about.

It's possible this content would be OK if Adobe put a visual label on all genAI content in search results - to allow anyone who needs accurate images to avoid these. It's possible it should go on the no-no list - like specifying specific cities or famous places. The temptation is significant because of the lack of supply of the real thing, but I'm not sure that is enough to make this type of fake stuff OK to offer to buyers. And I'm not a fan of leaving it up to the buyers - how on earth are they supposed to separate the snazzy looking image with the copied title from the real thing?

I think stock agencies accepting genAI content need to think hard about setting buyer-friendly, trustworthy, sustainable policies about these sorts of issues

It is especially galling that the sort orders of "Relevance" and "Featured" put some of the newer genAI items ahead of the real images of solar panel factories.

The copied titles from the original (human-generated) content:

Wide Shot of Solar Panel Production Line with Robot Arms at Modern Bright Factory. Solar Panels are being Assembled on Conveyor.

Large Production Line with Industrial Robot Arms at Modern Bright Factory. Solar Panels are being Assembled on Conveyor. Automated Manufacturing Facility


Click for larger version - first one and first four images, respectively, are the human created photos.




Note: I can't be certain all the genAI images are all wrong, but I looked at a bunch of images online and accompanying articles about solar production and did not see anything that looked like what Midjourney (or whoever) came up with. Given that reviewers can't be expected to know the innards of a whole variety of factories or industrial processes either, I'd argue that points towards disallowing this type of content altogether

I've spent way too much time looking at AdobeStock's fast-growing genAI collection and regularly have that flash of recognition for a face - a sense that I'm sure I've seen that person before.

I've tracked a couple of these down using AdobeStock's excellent "Find Similar feature and it's as if there are a handful of models for each age/ethnicity group and everyone's using this tiny set of people. Their pictures are everywhere!

I don't think this is copying another's images; I think it's the limits of the engines contributors are using to create content. There are now 13,860,209 items in the genAI collection (obviously not all people) and apparently a limited set of pretty faces to draw on. Each one of my examples is from a different contributor.

Here's a selection from 24,355 similar images to the top left item I saw this afternoon (click to see full size)



You can see the entire set of images here.

I'm sure people will point out that photographers can share models in the real world too, but the issue is scale - AI can just pump out near-endless quantities of this stuff. From a buyer's point of view, I don't want every other company's ad to look so similar, and that's going to become extraordinarily hard.

The guy's impossibly fit, tanned and handsome - and multi-talented, well traveled and perennially happy. Ideal stock model if he could ration his appearances just a little

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/adobe-could-add-another-25-093249850.html

"Adobe Inc.�s blistering rally has further to go, according to Morgan Stanley analyst Keith Weiss, who sees the creative software maker�s shares adding a further 25% over the next year."

Right now the stock is up over $20 this morning, at $551.97

From the Yahoo Finance video (emphasis mine):

"And taking a look at individual stocks. Adobe shares are popping today. They're at about an 18 month high, in fact. Morgan Stanley said the company is rallying and still has further to go. The bank now giving Adobe its highest price target on the street at $660. That's about 25% upside fueled by optimism over its artificial intelligence strategy."

We're over 4 months out from the Firefly announcement in March and although there have been many new "beta" features announced since then, and Firefly itself is still in beta, contributors - upon whose work most of the generative AI strategy rests - still have nothing more than a promise of compensation at some future time for some yet-to-be-determined amount.

From the Bloomberg article:

"This year�s rally in Adobe�s shares has only really got going since the end of May, with the stock up around 30% in that period as the maker of software such as Photoshop gave investors a glimpse of its AI strategy and calmed worries that it would get left behind by smaller firms specializing in the new technology."

The higher their stock goes, the more impatient I get to hear when contributors get our share. I hope Adobe remembers clearly what they said about the importance of commercially safe AI and why their offering is:

"At a moment when generative AI has been deemed to have �an intellectual property problem,� Adobe believes that Firefly is the only enterprise offering that �generates commercially viable, professional quality content at speed.� Its first Firefly model, launched in March, is trained on hundreds of millions of Adobe Stock�s licensed images, openly licensed content and other public domain content without copyright restrictions."

Edited to add Adobe's stock closed Jul 31 at $546.17; Aug 2nd: $530.30; Aug 3: $523.76

There are written Adobe Stock rules that genAI images should not say it's a real place:

"Don�t: Describe AI-generated content as depicting real people or places."

There are many thousands of examples of photo-like images supposedly of real towns or landmarks already in the collection and it's really unhelpful to customers who do the default search (which includes genAI images) to have no clue looking at the results that what purports to be Memphis, Fresno, London, the Eiffel Tower, Yellowstone, Austin, TX, etc. etc. isn't really.

The existing model for overlays on Editorial and Premium images (lower left of the thumbnail) would work well IMO and would alert buyers who don't even realize there is now AI content at Adobe Stock. They could then exclude genAI images for searches where it matters that the place they're searching for is depicted as it exists.

I did an example for a search for cliffs of moher which has a lot of recent AI uploads that could not be used if you were doing tourist promotions for that area of Ireland. Click for larger image



I started thinking about this when I saw an AI image labeled as Windansea beach in California and it clearly wasn't. I've been there.

Then I realized the description looked familiar and looked at one of my images of that area. It was copied verbatim by the AI uploader. The same thing had happened a few months back with a very different image of mine. Here are the pairs of images - it's not hard to guess which is the real one and which AI



I have no skin in this game - my images will continue to sell as long as the photo-realistic AI images of specific places are so useless - but from a buyer's perspective, if you want Tower Bridge in Sacramento, the genAI versions are 100% useless and just need to be clearly marked so the unwary buyer doesn't make an a$$ of themselves with Adobe Stock's help.

Although I do have some skin in the game - I don't want buyers walking away from Adobe Stock because they no longer feel safe licensing images there.

This topic has veered wildly away from tracking genAI collection sizes. I've moved it to the Off Topic section and will discontinue weekly updates on size information

 I thought it might be useful to keep track of the size of the AI generated images over time. Here are the numbers I gathered this afternoon (26 Jun 2023)

Adobe Stock AI collection

10,860,621

Dreamtime AI collection

2,937,151

CanStock collection (search for "generative ai")

752,558

Shutterstock collection

646,692

123RF collection

502,652

iStock collection  (keyword "AI Generated Image"; not sure what that really means)

167,370

DepositPhotos collection (search for "generative ai")

100,211

3,597 vectors
2,410 photos
2,377 illustrations
205 videos