Getty Images partnering with Nvidia over AI image generator

Getty Images (GETY) will be partnering with chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA) to build out its own AI-powered image generator. Yahoo Finance's Diane King Hall, Josh Schafer, and Pras Subramanian take a look back on Getty's lawsuit against AI art generator Stability AI and what the stock image supplier's pivot in the artificial intelligence space could mean.

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This post was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.

Video transcript

JOSH SCHAFER: And whenever we're talking trending and we're talking something buzzy, it feels like we're talking AI, Diane.

DIANE KING HALL: Of course!

Of course!

JOSH SCHAFER: I know you have your eyes on an AI story today.

DIANE KING HALL: I have-- I mean, there have been several that have crossed our radar today, right?

One that stood out to me today is this Getty Images story.

You know, you want to call this kind of artistic license meets AI.

So Getty partnering with the king of AI, Nvidia, to launch something that's being called Generative AI by Getty Images, right?

So what's interesting about this, to me, is, we think about earlier this year, Getty had pursued some legal action against Stability AI about what they were doing, saying they were stealing some of their images, right?

But now they're turning this kind of-- or embracing AI.

They said they had already been partnering with Nvidia.

And then in terms of using the images that-- using its platform to elevate its images using AI.

And so it just shows the expanding use case for AI, right?

JOSH SCHAFER: Two big things that stood out to me is, one, just seeing Nvidia called out again for being the company that's helping here.

I feel like we keep seeing that, and it came up a lot over earnings season, people just openly saying, Nvidia is the driver, right?

Nvidia is the company we want to work with, and they're going to help us build out that AI strategy.

And then the other thing, Pras, that I thought about when I think of Getty Images-- it's something we use here at Yahoo and plenty of newsrooms use to put images on the internet, right?

A lot of newsrooms subscribe to Getty Images and then put them at the top of articles.

And one thing that Getty said, according to a Bloomberg article, that they're not going to be doing with this is licensing news photos, because that's the first thing I thought of is, oh, boy.

Now we can get, you know, the deepfake kind of stuff we've talked about with AI and getting images that probably shouldn't be on the internet that aren't necessarily real with real powerful people.

So it's good to see, for me, at least, I think, to keep that part safe and not really work with that side of it yet.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of questions there, right?

So Diane, you mentioned the fact that they sued Stability AI, which makes the Stable Diffusion, the product that people have been using a lot of to make those AI images that you're talking about, that we don't want them to show Biden, like, riding a tractor in the middle of nowhere, right?

But you know, I think the issue there is now, so we're talking about maybe stock photos, right?

Like, we're talking about people who make stock photos, are they going to be upset about this?

I don't know.

We'll see.

Are we going to have the ability to see, is there to be marking on these images, so this is a AI-generated image?

And lastly, why not use it for news stuff, right?

If I want a picture of a car dealership and I can't find one, just make one for me.

Make one for me with Toyota Camrys-- DIANE KING HALL: That's fair.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: --on the lot.

JOSH SCHAFER: To me, it gets dangerous with people, though.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: You could do that.

DIANE KING HALL: Yes, it does.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: You could do that.

It's dangerous, but the Toyota Camry, like who cares?

DIANE KING HALL: Yeah, that's a fair point.

I mean, maybe the dealer will care, but-- PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Yeah, so but-- DIANE KING HALL: --most people wouldn't care.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: A lot of questions, especially when they were against it before, AP is not doing this, right?

Their big competitors not doing, getting to that world of this generated, AI-generated images for commercial purposes, stock purposes.

We'll see.

JOSH SCHAFER: Well, we get into this all the time, right?

It's, once you start having, well, we do news, but we kind of do news, and sometimes we don't do news, then you just get people on the internet nowadays that are confused, I think.

DIANE KING HALL: But look, what Getty said is they are going to be rewarding.

There's going to be compensation for some of the images that they use in this early phase of training this AI model.