Was curious as well, so I looked up their last investor report. In 2022 they had 24% profit growth, with $32.8m on $215.3m revenue.
They invest alot in AI image generation as well, and already offer a commercial product.
For their big customers their product might be the best of both worlds: AI-generated images based on prompts, with full legal clearance on use.
I doubt a marketing department of i.e. HP wants to risk a legal dispute about some image they used because it was generated by a model which was trained on unlicensed content.
Once this scenario is legally solid though....yes, I wonder how well Shutterstock will do...
For their big customers their product might be the best of both worlds: AI-generated images based on prompts, with full legal clearance on use.
I doubt a marketing department of i.e. HP wants to risk a legal dispute about some image they used because it was generated by a model which was trained on unlicensed content.
Once this scenario is legally solid though....yes, I wonder how well Shutterstock will do...