The American photo agency Getty Images recently developed its own AI image generator. The company relies on fair payment and this also applies to the registered content that is used for the new system.

AI and copyright are still a widespread problem. Getty Images clearly took this into account when developing its own image generator; the company guarantees the creators of the content used fair remuneration. CEO Craig Peters said this in an interview with The Verge.

Copyright ©

Getty Images’ launch of an AI image generator was quite a surprise in itself, the company didn’t seem to be immediately focused on AI until now. For example, consider the case against stable diffusion. There was also a ban on selling and uploading AI images. The picture agency with the well-known white watermark on its registered images is therefore very careful when it comes to copyright.

It is therefore less surprising that Getty also paid attention to fair compensation for creators in its own AI model. First of all, the image generator is only trained on content that Getty Images owns the rights to, so creators receive compensation when Getty generates revenue with its new model.

Wages for work

Two factors play a role in the compensation that Getty provides:

• How much of your own content is represented in the training of the model?
• How did the same content perform under the Getty license?

According to Peters, it’s a mix of quality and quantity. With these two factors, Getty has created a fixed compensation model that will be evaluated over time.