A Picture-Perfect Deal That Never Developed: The Getty-Shutterstock Deal Postmortem

My first introduction to generative AI was through the image generation tool DALL-E (a nod to the Pixar movie and robot Wall.E), and it was almost two years later that ChatGPT showed up and AI became a mainstream buzzword. The early versions of DALL-E were disappointing, but things started to improve rapidly as AI models, fed on a steady diet of faster processing power and data, evolved to become more powerful.

Getty Images (GETY) and Shutterstock (SSTK) were trying to address one of the biggest challenges facing the stock image industry: the rapid rise of generative AI.

By combining, the two companies hoped to create a larger content library, improve operating efficiencies, and better compete in a market that was changing faster than ever.

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