Shutterstock is letting professionals do their thing with its 700 million stock photos as it rolls out AI-powered photo editor tools and “fully customizable stock.”
Since Shutterstock made its name as a stock photo website, it has moved up a gear. It has built a creative design hub, complete with content marketing tools and, crucially, a Dall-E powered image maker.
That AI art generator is one of six tools the company calls “signature capabilities” that now allow brands, digital media, and marketing companies to effectively make unlimited changes to any photo in the Shutterstock library.
AI power and photo editors
Shutterstock’s range of photo editors is broadly focused on accelerating content ideation and production. In addition to the AI generator, there are Magic Brush, Variations, Expand Image. Background remover and smart resize.
The AI tools generally do what they promise. Expand Image allows users to zoom out, with AI filling in the gaps. Variations generates alternate selections for stock and AI images (which could at least reduce the endless scrolling to find the right image). Smart Resize resizes smartly and so on.
Magic Brush is perhaps the standout feature here – sorry, ‘signature ability’. This text-to-image tool allows users to touch the area to be changed and then describe the changes they want to see.
“Shutterstock was founded with the aim of bridging the gap between photographers and creative professionals looking to license their content. This new offering will bring our customers one step closer to their desired creative, as if they were directing the photo shoot,” said Paul Hennessy, Chief Executive Officer of Shutterstock.
It seems like AI and art can’t keep apart (or, at least, companies aren’t sure yet what to do with the technology). Apparently aware of the tensions within the artistic community, Shutterstock was keen to note that artists will be compensated if their images are licensed after editing. Once a balancing act, the company recently offered full indemnification to protect business users from copyright threats.