$22 this morning.

Hi everyone,

I�m wondering if anyone here has had a similar experience.

My Shutterstock contributor account was disabled on April 16, and I immediately submitted an appeal with all the necessary evidence and documentation. In their reply, they mentioned the review would take 30 to 60 days.

It�s now well past 60 days and I�ve still received no update. I�ve already sent a follow-up email but haven�t heard anything back yet.

Has anyone else gone through something like this?

Did you eventually get a reply?

Is there anything else I can do to speed up the process or escalate it?

Appreciate any advice or insights. Thanks in advance!

Pretty good week with earnings though sales volume was down some. Probably be a slower week this week and / or lower RPDs.

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Re-reading this... "50k" AI images... Even though I know what I'm doing, that... is a fair amount, to do accurately. (Did you do 'ai footage' as well, or was it just the images?)

What kind of quality control did you do, or did you just churn out as much as you could as fast as possible? Assuming you (probably like many with that volume) didn't have good quality control - so you either have an excessive number of IP issues (i.e. "statue of liberty"), or - significant keywording issues (i.e. you have say a picture of an orange with totally unrelated keywords like "race car, building", etc, etc...

That, I suspect is probably what triggered it...

In response to your question � yes, in addition to approximately 50,000 AI-generated images, my portfolio also included around 1,500 AI-generated videos. It was a significant and meticulous effort � both in terms of generation and proper attribution. Of course, I understand that not everything can be perfect, but based on my own assessment, about 95% of all uploaded AI assets were correctly and conscientiously prepared.

As for similars � yes, they may have occurred. When working with such a high volume of content, it�s challenging to create something entirely unique every single time. Still, I did my best to maintain variety. After all, that�s what the moderation team is for � to filter out excess and approve only what meets the standards. Adobe and contributors like myself are in this together � we both care about quality and consistent revenue. I fully understand that moderation takes resources, but it should be a two-way process. And if there are any issues, we contributors are ready to adjust, improve, and grow.

Regarding IP concerns � given the scale of my portfolio, the risk should be minimal. If there were any violations, they were likely rare and unintentional. I always did my best to avoid problematic or risky content.

Additionally, I don�t understand why � if the issue is suspected to be with AI content � the entire account was deactivated. Why not just temporarily disable the AI-generated assets pending review, instead of removing access to an entire portfolio of 50,000+ video footages that were created with years of effort and dedication? That kind of action feels extremely disproportionate, especially for someone who has been contributing for over 10 years.

What concerns me the most, however, is the complete lack of communication. It feels like a sign of disrespect toward the contributors � the very people who generate the content that powers this platform. We�re in the same boat. When problems arise, the logical path is to discuss them, find solutions, and improve the system � not to simply deactivate accounts without explanation or ignore official support requests submitted through the proper channels (which were even assigned case numbers). Waiting over three months for a response is simply not acceptable.

Is there anyone from the Adobe team actually reading this forum?

Well, in this case... I suspect that might be it then. 5% is just waaay too high. While yes, I totally agree deactivating the entire port is very harsh (and I think there should be better communication) - from their side, they don't know if 5%, 15% 25%, etc of your assets are misleading/inaccurate/wrong/etc, etc... And if they notice a certain pattern if you skipping certain quality control aspects, I can understand it. Better to deactivate things now and figure things out later - than spend months with a contributor "getting around" to trying to fix their portfolio, etc.

Even though I would love to outsource certain aspects of the "AI" generation process (because it is VERY timeconsuming, boring, and just in general not a 'fun' aspect of the image/video creation process), or - skip certain aspects of it, when preparing "ai" assets, I

a) I personally review EVERY single "generated" title, "generated" keywords, etc when/if using "ai" generated meta data, in detail
b) I personally review EVERY single asset, whether an image or video (including watching the ENTIRE generated videos, no matter how many I have)

BECAUSE I personally do that - for EVERY single asset, what I have found is...

a) Even midjourney (for images), or various video generation services - they do generate nude images/videos.
b) They will generate "IP" protected assets (i.e., statue of liberty, some famous painting, an identical/recognizable actor/actress/etc/etc).
c) The keyword generation tools generate gibberish, significant irrevelant or inaccurate data, or "keyword stuff"
d) The "keyword generation" tools will "skip" things/assign them incorrectly. (I.e., say you have a picture of a basketball, then a car. It will "mix up" results and assign the "car" keywords to the basketball, and the "basketball" keywords to the "car").
e) They "do" include "signatures" in the images/videos. (Because the "ai" is based off of MASSIVE theft, when they "train" the "ai" - they basiclaly steal, and then resell stolen assets).

So - if you were churning out as much as you could - without personally reviewing IN DETAIL, EVERY single asset... you most likely inadvertently have stuff like "Disney's Snow white & the Seven Dwarves" types of assets (both using trademarked terms in the title, the keywords, etc - as well as having actual generated assets like that), or any of the issues I mentioned above.

You know what you did wrong. You took shortcuts, you were hoping to get away with... But - you got caught, and now you are upset.

While I don't personally agree with deactivating an "entire" port for contributors that DO review EVERY single asset to make sure it follows 'their rules' in 'their playground', and I do believe there should be better communication... For contributors that take shortcuts and have a blatant/obvious and excessive pattern of various infringements, I can totally understand it. Obviously you've exceeded some internal threshold of what they deem to be "taking shortcuts" - and that is what most likely tripped it.

BECAUSE you "don't" know if it is "95%", "85%", "75%", etc - that is the issue right there. Obviously you didn't personally review every asset, and you took shortcuts to speed things up. (And if you are only guessing that "95%" was good, then 5% of 50,000 - means that you have 2500 image assets that are 'risque', inaccurate, IP violations, etc - and 5% of 1500 means that 75 videos that are risque, inaccurate, IP violations, etc.

Those are pretty high 'violation' numbers.

While yes, the moderation team is there to make sure assets meet certain standards (in itself a different topic, because sometimes I think certain members only feel like approving a certain %, so randomly approve/don't approve certain assets)... it's not really their job to make sure you didn't simply spam the crap out of things and skip certain QC elements. (Especially when you are not the only one playing the spam-all-you can game, and there are literally hundreds of thousands of east indian and arabic spammers trying to spam the crap out of things - so they don't really have time to figure out in detail 'who' is 'following their rules', and who isn't - so it's just much easier to deactivate ports that have consistent, blatant infringements. And again, "5%" of 50,000 is a VERY high number.

While of course extremely upsetting (I totally understand that) - while you are waiting - I would start going through your assets and looking for things like that, maybe start fixing things. Chances are you'll find its a pretty high number.

Congratulations all, don't spend it all in one spot. You must feel great taking a 20% pay cut from last year. Next year maybe is will also be cut by 20%. I really don't understand the logic of selling yourself short. I'd have more dignity collecting empties for the refund deposit.

in a declining/ transforming industry $X income will always be better than zero income. we're dancing with elephants in a commodity-based industry. take what's available or continue to whinge about how much your beauties should be earning!  my income has been steady for the past few years, mostly due to the new possibilities for earnings that others decline. fine by me!