Check your Contributor Fund - I got a mid two-figure present today.

 

Is this what they pay for training artificial intelligence?

Fairly high amount compared to what I got last time. Makes this month rather decent in terms of earnings.

Not sure about conclusions though. Does it mean the use of AI is on the rise?
Could explain my sharp decline in sales volume on Shutterstock lately (I know personal and anecdotal experience)

Is it just for photos, or do they already pay for videos?

95+

Got less than $40 for over 7,000 photos portfolio.  Is this good or bad?

$216 with 79 images. Guess they also pull from videos, too?

That's insane if it's only for 79 images!!  Shutterstock is working with NVIDIA.  So they may be scanning videos too.

I confirm that this latest payment is also for video since I received a payment  and I have no photos in my portfolio.

I have 2300 photos in the Data Catalog and 28000 photos in my total portfolio. I only earned $55 in funds. Is this normal?

Nice, thanks.

Quote from: Roscoe on March 27, 2024, 16:48

Quote from: RalfLiebhold on March 27, 2024, 16:28

Received $60.97 for the Contributor fund today.

I'm not complaining about the extra money, but my choice actually looked like this since about a year now  :

If the system works as I understand how it should work... you should have gotten nothing?
So this means either the checkbox is doing nothing, and your content is used for AI training, or they have a serious issue in contributor fund distribution.
Or maybe the checkbox only works for content uploaded after you changed the setting. (because before there was no choice)

None of the above is good, there should be transparancy.

First of all, I'm glad that I don't have to live off this crap 

Yes, it's not just maximum instraparent.
But Shutterstock has probably decided to stop communicating with us altogether. As you can see from the new review times of 7 - 10 days. No Explanation.

I would also assume that the images will continue to be used before the checkbox is clicked.
At least that corresponds to the amount I have already received last year.

I rejected the "data licensing" primarily because rejected images were included in the "data catalog" and could therefore no longer be resubmitted (because they had already been accepted) and were therefore completely lost for sale on Shutterstock.

But that didn't change anything. Rejected images are now labeled as "Eligible for data licensing" and cannot be resubmitted either because they have supposedly already been accepted.

I hope that I have been able to make this more or less clear.

I get the point of wanting to be able to resubmit for the commercial catalog. Apparently, that's not how it works anymore nowadays.

From their website:
For those opted out of data licensing, the Data Catalog will not be visible, however any content that is not acceptable for the creative Marketplace but is acceptable for data licensing will be marked as such in the Review tab. Shutterstock will retain these review results and this content can be published for data licensing in the event that the contributor elects to opt in to future data deals.

They seem to have some kind of shadow data licensing library for those who opted out.

The way they describe how it works is very vague and not transparent. Or I'm too dumb to understand.

Can I opt out of data licensing and having my content included in future datasets?
Yes, in February 2023 we have added an option in the contributor account settings that allows you to opt out of having your content included in future datasets.
The devil is in the details. "Future datasets". So one could understand that your content was in previous datasets, and if they are somehow still being used or sold, you probably also get compensated.

Further reading:

How are my individual earnings calculated?
Contributors will receive a share of the entire contract value paid by customers licensing datasets. The share individual contributors receive will be proportionate to the volume of their content and metadata that is included in the purchased datasets. Although inclusion in datasets is not reflected as other individual downloads in the Earnings Summary, like earnings from other eCommerce products, Shutterstock maintains an internal database of all assets used in all datasets that have been created since the launch of this product, so we can compensate our contributors accordingly.

Contributors whose content was used to train either model will be compensated for the role their IP played in the development of the original models, as well as through royalty payments tied to future generative licensing activity. If your content was used in both, you will receive a payment that compensates you for the inclusion of your content in both datasets, and you will have access to more future revenue opportunities because you will be eligible for compensation from our Contributor Fund for future licensing events of Generative content development from both of these models.

Why can’t I see the earnings and specific downloads from datasets in my Earnings Summary?
Due to their highly customized nature and scope of use, datasets are not a product that can be purchased directly on our website. Since datasets are manually curated, the individual assets that are included in this product are not reflected in your contributor account download history and Earnings Summary.

A lot of words to say: we sell something, we earn something and give you something, depending on variables.

How it all sounds to me (but I'm not sure) is that your content was sold into datasets before you could opt-out, and those contracts are still running, so you are also still getting paid by the contributor fund. But that's freewheeling from my side, agencies are not transparent in how they deal with selling datasets and compensate contributors.

Is it just for photos, or do they already pay for videos?

They pay for videos too now, i wonder for how long we can continue to make sales before AI will take over completly

I just noticed that on April 5th I also got a big chunk of money at once on Bigstock ("big" at least for Bigstock, where I don't really make any money worth mentioning at all ) - even though I have data training disabled there too, just like on Shutterstock.
Looks like they really don't care and will use your images for AI training either way.